HILDALE, Utah—A van and SUV carrying three women and 13 children sat near the widening stream, waiting for the water to recede so they could cross back to their homes in a small, polygamous town on the Utah-Arizona border.
But in an instant, floodwaters engulfed them, and the two vehicles were sucked downstream, bobbing in the turbulent water before they tumbled over an embankment. Only three children survived. Twelve are dead. One is missing.
Virginia Black watched in horror from her house as she made a video of the once-in-a-century flash flood. “There goes the van!” Black says in a high-pitched voice. “It went over the thing. Oh, dear.”
Downstream, people rushed to where the vehicles came to a stop. One witness described a gruesome scene of body parts, twisted metal and a young boy who somehow survived.
“The little boy was standing there,” Yvonne Holm recalled. “He said, ‘Are you guys going to help me?’”
