SALT LAKE CITY: A wall of water swept away two vehicles carrying women and children the western US, killing at least eight people and leaving five others missing in a community that served as a home base for polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, authorities said.

Three people survived as the flash flooding washed the vehicles several hundred yards downstream late afternoon Monday, Hildale assistant fire Chief Kevin Barlow said.

The flood "obviously caught these people off guard," Barlow told The Associated Press. "Witnesses say they were backing out of it trying to get away from it and it still swept them in."

One survivor was found downstream at a bank in town. Barlow didn't have information on the others who were rescued.

Barlow said the rescue effort was ongoing through the night but scaled back because of treacherous conditions in the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.

He confirmed seven deaths Monday night, while the Utah Division of Emergency Management said in a later Facebook post that a further victim had been located.

The floods came after heavy rains fell in the canyons just north of the towns, sending waves of water barreling through the streets. The towns sit at the foot of picturesque red rock cliffs about 315 miles (505 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.

The women and children were in an SUV and a van on a gravel road north of the towns, Barlow said. It appears they were coming back from a park in the area when the flash flood hit, he said.

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.

More than four years after Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides, 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.

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.