Twelve adults and children died after their car was picked up by the flood waters and pushed into a ravine. Three survived and one is still missing
But in an instant, flood waters 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 of the 16 are dead. One is still 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! Oh my god!' says Black 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?"'
Among the dead are Sheldon Black Jr, his wife Della and four of their young children including infant son Tyson, older sons Shem and Seth and daughter Melanie.
The couple is believed to have two older sons who were not present at the time of the flooding.
Also killed in the flooding were Della's sisters Josephine Annie Johnson Jessop and Naomi Johnson Jessop.
According to the sisters' brother Brian Johnson, Naomi had three children and Josephine had four or five. Josephine's eldest son was reportedly the only one of her children to survive, after climbing out of their van to get help.
'We are in shock, really,' Johnson told NBC News. 'We're just trying to figure out what's going on with these funerals.'
The flooding was so extreme that the charging waters were powerful enough to break up pavement, as seen above on Tuesday
'They didn't have a chance to live really,' he said. 'I wished that I had been able to see them more.'
Ben Black, also an ex-FLDS member, told the Salt Lake Tribune that one of the victims was his sister-in-law and some of his nieces and nephews. As of Tuesday afternooni though, he was waiting for official confirmation.
'They're in a better place,' Black said. 'I'm not mad about it.'
Black said after he was kicked out of the church in 2012, his family stayed and as loyal members of the church, stopped talking to him.
Some 20 miles to the north at Zion National Park, the same storm system sent flash floods coursing through a narrow slot canyon, killing four people and leaving three others missing. The group from California and Nevada in their 40s and 50s began their hike before officials closed the canyons that evening because of flood warnings, park spokeswoman Holly Baker said.
She said their identities were not being released until their families were notified, but the bodies found Tuesday were those of three men and one woman.
The first body was found around 1:30pm on Tuesday and a second body was found an hour later. The third body was found later on Tuesday afternoon and a fourth was found in the evening, Baker said. Two were found near the mouth of the canyon, and two were downstream.
Baker said rescuers on Tuesday evening were searching downstream for the man and two women who were still missing. She said park officials have no way of knowing if the three people missing were trapped in the canyon or had been carried downstream.
'Another tragedy for our state. Reeling right now,' Utah Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox said on Twitter.
The majority of the 7,700 people in the Hildale/Colorado City area are members of the Fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), an off-shoot of the Mormon religion. Above, children walk near the scene of a wrecked car on Tuesday
The height of the storm lasted about 30 minutes, pouring 1 1/2 inches of rain into a desert-like landscape with little vegetation and steep slopes.
Monday's weather event was like a bucket of water being poured onto a rock - it slid right off and began running downstream, picking up sediment to create the forceful, muddy mess that rushed through the city, McInerney said. Another half-inch of rain came within the hour.
'It just hit the wrong place at the wrong time,' he said.
Residents called it the worst flood in memory for the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, which is home base for Warren Jeff's polygamous sect. The majority of the 7,700 people in the two communities are followers of Jeffs' sect or have ties to polygamy. Jeffs, who was president of the FLDS church from 2002 to 2007, is serving a life sentence in prison for two counts of sexual assault on a child.
More than four years after Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, the community is split between loyalists who still believe Jeffs is a victim of religious persecution and defectors who are embracing government efforts to pull the town into modern society.
Members of the sect, which believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, are believed to be discouraged from watching TV, using the Internet or having much contact with the outside world.
The community is a patchwork of upscale, elegant residences surrounded by large walls and unfinished, dilapidated houses that remain just as they were in the early 2000s, when Jeffs ordered that all construction stop in Utah to focus on building his compound in Texas.
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.
'It was an act from God,' Hildale Mayor Phillip Barlow told reporters of Monday's tragedy, according to the Deseret News. 'This is something we can't control. ... It happened too fast.'
CoyLin Pipkin, 60, and her husband John Barlow could only watch from their cars as the white van carrying the church members swirled around in the fast moving water and careened over the edge into a ravine.
'It is devastating,' Pipkin said Tuesday from her home.
Before they were swept away, she said she saw the three mothers standing outside their cars, watching the flood waters as many people in the community do when it rains. In this case, though, they had no idea of the water bearing down on them.
The women were returning from a visit to a nearby park, and it wasn't clear if they were aware of the National Weather Service warnings: 'Move to higher ground now. Act quickly to protect your life.'
'It was terrifying,' said Black. 'They were getting washed away, and there was nothing I could do about it.'
Searches are expected to resume Wednesday in both Hildale, for the final unaccounted for person, and in Zion for the missing three hikers.
Crews have worked since Monday evening monitoring flood crossings and searching the banks of Short Creek amid sporadic rain showers. Contractors using heavy equipment have worked to clear thousands of tons of mud and debris, and the National Guard has been called in to help with the cleanup.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert said he was 'heartbroken,' and that the state has offered its full resources to Hildale to aid the search and rescue effort.
Following the flooding, video was released showing the dramatic rescue of a car full of women and children after their car got caught in the flood waters.
Video shows the moment emergency responders in yellow vests waded out into the muddy rushing waters to rescue the women and children, their colorful prairie dresses sodden with water.
The timing of these deadly flash floods may have many in the Mormon community fearing the end of the world. Stores in Utah have been selling out of freeze-dried food, flashlights, tents and other items for emergency based on a set of signs that point to an end of days.
People who are currently preparing for the end of the times are called 'preppers.'
Preppers think there are seven years between each major disaster, hence the seven year gap between September 11 and the stock market crash of September 29, 2008.
Since September has so far sparked some wild NASDAQ fluctuations and a China stock market free fall, some Utah Mormons think plenty worse could happen any day now.
According to prepper lore, September 28, the day of the blood moon, will also usher in an earthquake near Utah, says the outlet.
And that's not all set to happen this month, according to preppers. They also reportedly think the U.N. will invade the country and there will be technological disruptions on a mass scale.
These fears are egged on by an author named Julie Rowe, a Mormon who has written two books on end times, 'A Greater Tomorrow: My Journey Beyond the Veil' and 'The Time Is Now,' says the Tribune.
Rowe gives speeches at Mormon venues, drawing huge crowds of worry warts, and she urges everyone to prepare for world chaos.
Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took the unusual step of saying that the author didn't represent the church's beliefs.
I think that god has spoken.