SALT LAKE CITY – Heavy rain sent flash floods coursing through a narrow slot canyon in southern Utah’s Zion National Park, killing three people and leaving four others missing, officials said Tuesday.
Three bodies were found a day after the group of four men and three women set out Monday to hike down the canyon, park spokeswoman Holly Baker said. They went canyoneering before park officials closed slot canyons that evening because of flood warnings.
The deaths come after 12 people died when fast-moving floodwaters on Monday swept away two vehicles near the Utah-Arizona border, about 20 miles south of the park. One person remains missing from the small polygamous town of Hildale, Utah.
In Zion, rescuers were waiting for water levels to drop before entering the canyon to search for the missing hikers.
The group hailed from California and Nevada and were all in their 40s and 50s, Baker said. She didn’t have further details on their identities.
The first body was found around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and a second body was found an hour later. The third body was found later Tuesday afternoon, Baker said.
Baker did not know if the bodies found were male or female.
Park rangers advised the group when they picked up their permit Monday that weather conditions were poor, but until canyons are closed, Baker said rangers leave it up to visitors to determine whether it’s safe to continue their excursions.
The park doesn’t close canyons until actual flooding occurs, which was around 5 p.m. Monday, she said.
Someone who knew the group alerted park officials Monday that they hadn’t checked in after their trip. Park rangers found the group’s empty cars at the canyon’s trailhead that evening.
The group was in Keyhole Canyon, which narrows to 6 feet across in parts and involves climbing, swimming and rappelling.
Baker said the park received 0.63 inch of rain in one hour Monday.
The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings through 7:45 p.m. Tuesday for Zion National Park, as the saturated area could be hit again with light to moderate rainfall.
The warning said rivers and streams at the popular park and in neighboring Springdale and Rockville are already elevated and additional rain will swell the waterways to dangerous levels.
Zion is the most-visited of Utah’s five national parks and attracts nearly 3 million visitors a year.
Also on Tuesday, search-and-rescue teams trudged through muddy streambeds in a small polygamous town on the Utah-Arizona border, looking for four people who were missing after a devastating flash flood that killed at least at least nine people.
With more rain in the forecast, men in helmets were perched at high points along the route, watching carefully for any more floodwaters that could suspend the search in Hildale, the secluded community that is the home base of Warren Jeffs’ polygamist sect.
The four missing were among 13 children and three women in two vehicles that got smashed Monday by a wall of water and carried several hundred yards downstream. The dead consisted of the women and six children ranging in age from 4 years old to teenagers. Three people survived.
On Tuesday, the streets were caked in red mud, and earth movers clearing the roads piled up mounds of dirt. As a helicopter buzzed overhead, crowds of boys in jeans and girls and women in deep-colored prairie dresses watched the rescue effort.
Residents called it the worst flood in memory for the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, which are 315 miles south of Salt Lake City at the foot of picturesque red rock cliffs. It was in this area at Maxwell Canyon where heavy rains sent water down Short Creek and barreling through the towns.
The torrent was so fast, “it was taking concrete pillars and just throwing them down, just moving them like plastic,” said Lorin Holm, who called the storm the heaviest in the 58 years he’s lived in the community.
The women and children were in an SUV and a van on a gravel road north of the towns. They were returning from a park when they stopped at a flooded crossing and got out to watch the raging waters, Hildale Mayor Philip Barlow said.
What they did not know was that a flash flood was brewing in the canyon above, he said. It came rushing down and engulfed their vehicles.
“We’re greatly humbled by this, but we realize that this is an act of God, and this is something we can’t control,” said Barlow, a Jeffs follower. “We have to take what we receive and do the best we can.”
About three hours earlier, the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for the area, saying: “Move to higher ground now. Act quickly to protect your life.” It’s unknown if the victims were aware of the warning.
The raging torrents are not uncommon in an area prone to flash floods, but the volume and pace of Monday’s rain was a “100-year event,” said Brian McInerney, hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.
