Updated Nov. 30, 2019 4:14 PM
Officials have confirmed that two of the three missing children were found dead on Saturday after a military-style vehicle was swept down Tonto Creek on Friday.
The search continues for the third child, who remains missing.
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.
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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 three miles downstream of the crash location, ABC15 said.
The age of the children missing range from five to 10, and the people involved are from out of state, according to Fox10.
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 water ways rater 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 heavies 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, wrecked havoc on travel as a deluge of rain-flooded roads.
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