Slogging through debris fields of mud, rock and tree limbs, searchers found the bodies of seven people Friday who were carried away by Christmas Day landslides on the charred slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains. At least nine others remained missing, most of them children, and hope was beginning to fade.
"There's some reality setting in for us today," San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty said as he helped oversee search efforts at a church camp and, about seven miles west, a KOA campground that had been inundated by the slides. "We want to be optimistic and save lives. But time is our enemy."
The mudslides were a tragic postscript to the fires that devastated vast swaths of forest and brushland in late October and early November. Beginning early Thursday afternoon, torrential rains unloosed tons of muck on mountainsides left barren by the fires and sent it plunging down creek beds and canyons.
Fire and rescue officials surveying the damage Friday calculated that the slide in Waterman Canyon -- which in places had been a 6- to 12-foot wall of mud carrying boulders and entire trees -- traveled as fast as 45 mph, giving people little opportunity to get out of its way.
"It's unbelievable up there," Brierty said. "There are 75-foot logs stacked like matchsticks. Boulders the size of Volkswagens scattered like pebbles. Old concrete bridges knocked down because they could not take the stress of the debris flow."
"How much energy," he asked, "does it take to wash out a concrete bridge?"
Five of the bodies found Friday were down the slope from the St. Sophia Camp and Retreat Center, a rustic facility in the canyon that is run by the Greek Orthodox Church.
Fourteen people were rescued from the camp Thursday, but nine remained missing a day later.
Some children were apparently playing in a playground when they were swept away. Among those unaccounted for were the camp's popular caretaker, his wife and three children.
The other two bodies were found near a KOA campsite in Devore. Fifty-two people had been rescued there overnight after being stranded by a flooded creek.
The dead were identified as Carroll Eugene Nuss, 57, and Janice Bradley, 60. Nuss was believed to have been visiting the area from Kansas; Bradley was the manager of the campground.
Beginning Friday morning, a helicopter and as many as 90 people, many accompanied by trained dogs, began searching for the missing in Waterman Canyon.
They strode along the bed of Waterman Creek, staring at the ground and peering into crevices created in debris piles, over and under logs and boulders, even into branches of trees left standing. One rescue worker could be seen yanking soggy clothing out of the muck and piling it onto a boulder. In some places, cables were drawn across the stream, which was down to a modest flow by sunrise, to ease crossings on foot.
In the hours before the slide, the camp had been the scene of a holiday party. A group mostly of Guatemalan immigrants arrived for a Christmas tamale lunch as guests of the camp's caretaker, Jorge Monzon, and his family. After lunch, while adults cleaned up and children cavorted at a small playground near the creek, the sky darkened, and the rain, which had been falling all day, grew more intense.
About 1 p.m., Clyde Chittenden, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection battalion chief who lives in the canyon, drove by the camp on his way to a Christmas dinner. After passing the facility, he said, he looked up from his steering wheel and "saw a wall of mud coming down the creek." At that point, he said, the mud was still in the creek channel and the camp was apparently unharmed.
But sometime before 2 p.m., the mountainside came crashing down.
Among the missing Friday were Monzon; his wife, Clara; and their three children, Wendy, 17, Racquel, 10, and Jeremiah, 6 months.
The Very Rev. John Bakas, dean of St. Sophia Cathedral in Los Angeles, agonized over the fate of the caretaker, who has worked at the camp since 1997.
"We haven't been able to reach them," Bakas said. "We're terribly distressed. On Christmas Day! I still haven't quite come to grips with it. I keep thinking it's something that happened someplace else."
The bodies found in Waterman Canyon were mostly in the lower half of the two-mile slide area, tangled in trees, mud and brush, making it difficult for searchers to remove them. They were not immediately identified.
The search effort was expected to last through the night, and some of those taking part said they were still looking for survivors, not bodies, despite daunting conditions that included overnight temperatures in the 20s.
"Human will, whatever you want to call it -- you can survive this," said Jon Usle, a volunteer with San Bernardino County Search and Rescue. "With a little knowledge and some dumb luck, you can make it."
But others sounded notes of futility. "It might be weeks until we find them," said one San Bernardino County firefighter, who declined to give his name.
