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Nine people have been confirmed dead and four others are still missing after two vehicles were swept away during flash flooding in a small polygamous Utah town.
Three women and 13 children were in an SUV and a van on their way to watch the floods in the community of Hildale on Monday evening when a wall of water and debris swept them several hundred yards downstream.
Emergency crews said on Tuesday they had recovered nine bodies, including two which turned up in Arizona just over the border downstream.
A woman photographs a 50-ft deep gorge created by the Hildale flash floods
One of the bodies, of a child roughly 10 years old, was found five miles from the vehicles.
Emergency crews are still looking for an adult and three children.
Three people survived the tragedy.
The floods were triggered by heavy rain in canyons north of the towns
The victims appear to be from different families, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Barlow said the deluge “obviously caught these people off guard”.
“Witnesses say they were backing out of it, trying to get away from it and it still swept them in.”
Brian McInerney, a National Weather Service hydrologist in Salt Lake City, said the torrent had been a “100-year event”.
Onlookers watch construction crews removing the flood debris
The search was temporarily called off on Monday night as treacherous conditions continued to affect Hildale and its sister town of Colorado City, Arizona.
The floods were triggered by heavy rain in canyons north of the towns, funnelling waves of water through the streets of the town.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert said he was “heartbroken” by the tragedy and promised all state resources would be directed to the recovery effort.
Hildale, which is 315 miles south of Salt Lake City, is home to 7,700 people and is the base of a polygamous sect run by Warren Jeffs.
Jeffs, 59, the former president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was jailed for life in 2011 for two counts of sexual assault on a child.
Courtesy of Sky News
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