Steve Quayle News Alerts

December 26, 2003

The two people were found at Saint Sophia Camp in Waterman Canyon at about 8 a.m., said Chip Patterson, spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

Patterson said the others missing people range in age from six months to 45 years old. Earlier, more than a dozen others were rescued.

Crews slogged past fallen trees and boulders in their search. Traveling by foot because a road bridge was washed out, one team climbed up the steep terrain and another descended it in an effort to reach the Saint Sophia Camp in Waterman Canyon, just north of San Bernardino.

The deep mud and slick, rocky ground prevented the crews from reaching the camp overnight. They were trying again Friday and sent up helicopters after dawn to scan the area for survivors, said San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty.

Fourteen people who had been staying at the Greek Orthodox youth camp when the mudslides swept through had been rescued by late Thursday, some pulled from the mud and from beneath fallen trees.

Brierty said a group of 24 people had been at the camp celebrating the holiday. They were in two structures when a surging stream of water and mud swept through, sweeping away one of the structures and the 10 people inside, he said. The others were also swept into the mud.

"One man was there with his 3-year-old child and said he grabbed the child and watched his wife and his other child wash away," said Kimberly VandenBosch, spokeswoman for St. Bernadine Medical Center in San Bernardino.

Ten of the people rescued were treated for minor injuries, including a man was found buried waist-deep in mud and debris and trapped beneath a log. Rescue crews were able to cut the log free and carried the man across a creek to safety, County fire Capt. Rick McClintock said.

Most of those at the camp were believed to be friends and family of the camp caretaker, said Theofanis Degaitas, parish priest at the Prophet Elias Greek Orthodox Church in San Bernardino, which is affiliated with the camp.

No one answered the phone at the Saint Sophia Camp. The camp hosts summer religious retreats for children and other events year-round, but Degaitas said no camp events were scheduled that day.

The storm dumped more than 3 inches of rain on areas heavily scarred by wildfires this fall, flooding streets in San Bernardino and elsewhere, cutting power to more than 67,000 customers and causing mudslides. The blazes in October and November, the most severe in state history, burned off vegetation that normally would help shore up the steep terrain, leaving the ground prone to mudslides.

Much of Waterman Canyon had been scorched by a late October wildfire that burned more than 91,000 acres, destroyed 993 homes and killed four people.

On Thursday, authorities evacuated residents who live in the canyon and closed off the road leading there. A surging stream of mud and water rushed through the canyon, which looked like a sea of gray mud.

Temperatures dropped into the 40s in the region, and Brierty said rescuers faced "incredibly mushy, muddy, slippery" conditions. Some of the rescuers were slipping into the mud up to their hips as they tried to navigate the canyon, he said.

The debris flows, some more than 6 feet high, contained logs and branches, making them especially dangerous.

"Even a foot or 2 feet of this will knock you down," Brierty said.

Elsewhere in the county, a mudslide triggered by the heavy rain damaged and toppled trailers at a campground in Devore. Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers said 30 to 50 people suffered minor injuries. Several people were unaccounted for, but authorities said they were not believed to be in danger. In Lytle Creek Canyon, a 4-foot-high mud flow crossed a road, trapping a car. The driver wasn't hurt.

Emergency crews spent much of Christmas Day setting sand bags outside homes and along waterways to contain flood water and diverting traffic from washed out roads.

The Pacific storm began moving into Southern California on Wednesday evening, bringing Los Angeles its first rainy Christmas Day in two decades.

Strong wind gusts downed power lines in parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, and in downtown Los Angeles, wind blew eight stories of scaffolding onto parked cars, damaging the vehicles but causing no injuries.

The mudslides also derailed an empty freight train in the Cajon Pass near Los Angeles and shut down two main tracks between the Los Angeles basin and points east that serve about 100 trains a day, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern and A&D Santa Fe Railway. There were no reports of injuries.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106699,00.html