Holiday-Makers Missing

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30849, 7 September 1965, Page 15

Holiday-Makers Missing

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) ZION NATIONAL PARK, (Utah), Sept. 6. Fears are held for 48 holiday-makers, missing since a heavy rainstorm yesterday sent the Virgin river cascading through the Zion narrows, a deep and narrow gorge in the National Park. A similar flash flood in the narrows in 1951 killed five persons. Several groups of holidaymakers were known to have been in the gorge yesterday, including a party of 35 headed by a veteran walker, Sheriff Otto Fife. That group entered on Friday afternoon and had been due out early yesterday. But no word had been received from them.

The chief park ranger. Mr Del Armstrong, said three other groups, comprising 13 persons, were also in the area. The whereabouts of another group of 25 were not definitely known. Urged Not To Enter This party had been urged not to enter the area, but it was not known whether they heeded the advice. Sheriff Fyfe’s group was reported to include a number of doctors, scientists and lawyers and three agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—all friends and associates of the sheriff. Mr Armstrong said the gorge entrance from the park had been closed at the time, but all the parties had entered from the upstream end, out-

side the park boundary. Even more persons might possibly have entered the gorge, he said. “The water didn’t recede until after dark. We’ll start searching at daybreak,” he said late last night. He had hopes that everyone in the gorge was safe, since the storm struck early in the morning when the

holiday-makers should still have been asleep on high ground. Another 1200 campers in the huge national park, in south-west Utah, near the Arizona border, were safe, Mr Armstrong said. Mr Armstrong said today’s sudden storm appeared to be heavier than the one which hit the area four years ago.