Hope Fades for Victims of Mudslides

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.