Two More Victims Of Canyon Flash Flood Recovered From Lake

As rescue workers pulled more bodies from a usually crystal cove of Lake Powell, officials struggled Thursday to determine whether 11 hikers were properly warned of a pending flash flood before they were killed in the nearby twisting narrows of Antelope Canyon.

Plus, in other developments:

Two French children were orphaned by Tuesday’s drownings. The girls, ages 8 and 13, were left behind in a Page motel room while their parents went on the hike.

At least two more bodies were discovered, presumably flushed along Antelope Canyon more than a mile into the lake. The body of a woman was discovered Wednesday. At least eight hikers were still missing, but presumed dead.

Navajo Nation officials announced plans for new warning signs, fines for violations and tougher enforcement of regulations to help ensure that such a tragedy does not occur again. Lower Antelope Canyon remained closed to the public.

Meanwhile, Clarence Gorman, the parks director for the Navajo Nation, said Thursday that a Navajo guide, identified as Ella Young, violated tribal regulations by not staying with the tourists after allowing them into the slippery sandstone slot. Young’s family has a concession from the tribe to conduct tours in Lower Antelope Canyon.

“All of our concessionaires are required to accompany the tours,” Gorman said. “She shouldn’t have let them go in.”

Meanwhile, searchers using tracking dogs found a second body, that of a man, in the shallow waters of Lake Powell near the mouth of the canyon. A third body, sex unknown, was found nearby late in the day.

The daughters of the unidentified French couple were taken into custody by state Child Protective Services workers.

“The girls did not want to go on the trip and were very distraught that their parents went,” said Stephen Boldin, a Page hotel clerk.

Investigators said that six of the flood victims were women and that five were men. Seven of the victims are believed to be from France; two are U.S. citizens, from New York City and California; and one each are from England and Sweden.

Gorman also said that each hiker heading for that area of Antelope Canyon had been warned about flooding but “foreigners are really aggressive in getting their way.”

But officials of TrekAmerica - whose guide, Poncho Quintane, 28, was the lone survivor of Tuesday’s flash flood - said they believed there was no clear warning given of the approaching water.

Gorman said the Upper Antelope Canyon, south of Arizona 98, was closed at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday when tour guides saw a trickle of water develop in the canyon bed.

At that point, one of the guides rushed to the lower canyon, where she caught up with Young and some of the hikers, who had just entered the canyon, and warned them of the danger.

“She (Young) warned them not to go beyond that point,” Gorman said. “Then, she turned around and left and thought the others were behind her and going to leave, too. I don’t know what made them decide to continue on.”

Jeff Sandy, sales director of TrekAmerica at the firm’s headquarters in Rockaway, N.J., said Quintane heard that there might be some risk, but that he was told by someone - exactly who the company is not sure - that the group could proceed.

“It’s our belief that he checked with the people running Antelope Canyon, the Navajos, and was told that it was no problem,” Sandy said.

Five of the 11 people presumed killed in the flash flood were part of an 11-member international tour group - ages 19 to 34 - traveling with TrekAmerica from Denver to Los Angeles, Sandy said. The other six TrekAmerica clients who did not hike Antelope Canyon flew back to Europe on Thursday, he said.

Young could not be reached for comment Thursday. Gorman said Navajo Tribal officials also had not talked to her because her family was in the middle of a four-day religious ceremony honoring the dead, a tradition on the nation’s largest reservation.

Sandy, himself a former tour guide, said normal procedures for his firm would be to avoid situations where there is the possibility of sudden danger.

Search operations had centered on what Coconino County Sheriff Joe Richards called a “big sludgy blanket of debris” about 100 yards long and 2 to 5 feet deep at the mouth of the canyon, where it joins with Lake Powell.