HILDALE, Utah (AP) β Authorities say at least 12 people have died in flash flooding that swept away two vehicles in a polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border.
Thousands of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, live in the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. The church is led by Warren Jeffs, who is serving life in prison in Texas for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides.
Thirteen children and three women were in two vehicles that got smashed Monday by a wall of water and carried several hundred yards downstream. One person remains missing in the floodwaters, while three children survived.
Hildale Mayor Philip Barlow said, “We’re greatly humbled by this, but we realize that this is an act of God, and this is something we can’t control.”
The search effort has temporarily eased tensions between Jeffs followers and others who no longer belong to the sect but still live there.
It is believed that Jeffs still rules the FLDS through letters and phone calls from prison.
