HILDALE, Utah (AP) – Two smashed cars covered in mud and a few bunches of wildflowers arranged nearby mark the few visual reminders that nine children and three women died when flash flooding ripped through this small polygamous town on the Utah-Arizona border.
Small makeshift memorials have only started emerging. There are no public plans for a memorial service, and few outward signs of grief.
There is just red mud on roadways and a strange, quiet divide in a community that holds non-believers at arm’s length.
The deaths briefly united followers and defectors of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs as they scrambled to find survivors from the Monday flood. But the animosity soon returned.
“Though there seemed to be some mingling, the lines of segregation were pretty obvious,” said Dowayne Barlow, who left the church three years ago but recently returned to Hildale, Utah, a town ruled by the sect.