Hope Fades for Victims of Mudslides

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."