The search continues for the third child, a six-year old girl, who remains missing after a military-style vehicle had been swept away while attempting to cross the swollen Tonto Creek on Friday."We want to bring her home safely to her family," Lt. Virgil Dodd of the Gila County Sheriff's Office told The Associated Press. "She needs to come home today, and we're going to do that today."Officials have confirmed that two of the three missing children were found dead on Saturday.Around 4 p.m. PST Friday, the vehicle had attempted to cross Tonto Creek at the Bar X Crossing, where it had gotten stuck, according to the Gila County Sheriff's Office.One adult and four other children had escaped the car to an island, where they were rescued by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and
Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopters. Another woman had escaped the car and was rescued from the shore.Their car was discovered Friday night, empty, the Gila County Sheriff's Department told ABC15. The two children, a five-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, had been found 3 miles downstream of the crash location, ABC15 said.The nine members of the family had gathered from various parts of Arizona to visit family for a
Thanksgiving celebration, according to the AP. The two children found dead were the son and niece of the adults involved in the incident.Earlier that morning, the Sheriff's Office had posted on
Facebook that the Bar X Crossing across Tonto Creek had been closed along with a few other routes."It had been showery in the region most of the day Thursday, with some heavier downpours in times in spots," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jake Sojda said. "In arid mountainous regions like what is found in the Tonto Basin it doesn't take much for small streams and dry creek beds to become raging torrents as any rain quickly runs into these waterways rather than soaking into the ground. Even downpours well away from the creek could have caused a flash flood to surge down the creek." The water level of Tonto Creek near Roosevelt, Arizona, had risen to about 6 ft. by 4 p.m. PST on Nov. 29, 2019. (Image/NWS) "Thursday night a steady and at times very heavy rain moved into the region. It looks like the heaviest rain moved into the region between around 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. PST Friday morning," Sojda said. "The Phoenix metro area generally recorded about an inch of rainfall, but in the mountainous areas to the east, rainfall amounts more on the order of 3-4 inches likely fell, leading to these mountain creeks and streams to turn into raging torrents of water."The closure of the crossings comes after the system that crossed the
American Southwest on Thanksgiving Day wreaked havoc on travel as a deluge of rain flooded roads.