10 Believed Missing in Mudslide

Rescue teams combed through mud, rocks and tree limbs in search of missing children and adults Thursday evening after Christmas Day rains triggered mudslides that engulfed and trapped about 24 campers in San Bernardino County’s Waterman Canyon.

By late Thursday, search and rescue teams had plucked 14 campers from the muck, but 10 others were believed missing. One man reportedly watched in horror as his wife and daughter were swept away.

The campground is north of the city of San Bernardino in a section of the forest that had been heavily scorched by recent wildfires, and authorities said shifting mud and debris made the rescue work perilous.

“There are people of all ages still missing,” San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty said. “It will be a horrible tragedy if these people can’t be found.”

The drama at the St. Sophia Camp -- a church-owned camping area north of San Bernardino -- came on what was, for much of Southern California, the first rainy Christmas in 20 years.

The wet weather triggered hundreds of traffic accidents, including one in which a driver was killed; contributed to scattered power outages; and raised the prospect of further flooding and mudslides, particularly in areas of San Bernardino County hard hit by fires this fall.

“Because of the heavy rainfall, we do expect mudflows or debris flows in the recently burned areas,” said Noel Isla, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

One of the injured campers, an unidentified man, “was trapped up to his waist in debris and we had to use chain saws to get him out,” said Tracy Martinez, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department. Martinez said the man was taken to Loma Linda University Medical Center with hypothermia and possible internal injuries.

As of Thursday evening, officials at St. Bernardine Medical Center said they had received 10 campers, all of them covered in mud and suffering from early signs of hypothermia. But only four required treatment and all were subsequently released, said hospital spokeswoman Kimberly Vanden Bosch.

“They were obviously very shaken up. One man came in with a little child and said he had just watched his wife and little daughter wash away,” Vanden Bosch said. “There was a lot of uncertainty ... Obviously, to see a wall of mud and water come at them was unlike anything they had ever experienced.”

The mudslide at the St. Sophia Camp was reported to authorities at 1:50 p.m., but rescue personnel were delayed in reaching the area because a bridge was clogged with debris on California 18 north of Waterman Canyon.

Rescue workers eventually reached the campground by an alternate route through the mountain towns of Silverwood Lake and Twin Peaks.

Once there, Martinez said, rescuers found that “the mud came down to most people’s waists. It was not something you could walk out of. We’ve got a lot of debris from the fires floating in these waters. Twelve- to 18-foot trees are floating down.”

Deputies said two cabins were destroyed.

Rescue efforts were complicated by uncertainty over how many people might be missing. Martinez said authorities were talking to family members of the campers to determine how many people might be unaccounted for.

Authorities said Thursday evening that many of the campers appeared to be members of a single extended family.

“One of our biggest concerns at this time is hypothermia as the night goes on and people are out there in the cold mud and water,” Martinez said.

St. Sophia Camp covers 66 acres in the San Bernardino Forest, according to a website maintained by the St. Sophia Camp Committee.

The committee is made up of members from a number of Greek Orthodox churches throughout Southern California, including St. Sophia, St. Anthony and St. Katherine.

The camp can house 50 to 60 people in the winter, according to the website.

The National Weather Service said the rainfall, which by early evening totaled as much as 4.5 inches in foothill areas, was expected to subside in the Los Angeles Basin today. But in the San Bernardino Mountains, forecasters said, rain and snow were likely to continue through midafternoon.

On Thursday, San Bernardino County already was the focus of some of the worst problems. In addition to the campground situation, a freight train derailed near the intersection of the 15 and 215 freeways in an apparent weather-related accident. No one was injured as a number of flatcars went off the rails.

Other mudslides occurred earlier in the day in the San Bernardino County communities of Devore, San Antonio Heights and Lytle Creek, where authorities pulled one motorist from a submerged car.

In the Lytle Creek area in the southwestern part of the county, a number of residents were evacuated, Martinez said. As of Thursday evening, the main road into the area, Lytle Creek Road, remained shut down.

Campers also were stranded at a KOA campground in Devore by a flooded creek that prevented them from leaving. But those people were not believed to be in danger, authorities said late Thursday.

In Los Angeles County, floodwaters around the fire-scarred hills near Claremont entered four homes, requiring firefighters to help a pregnant woman to safety. Teams of firefighters put down sandbags to help protect neighborhoods.

In Malibu, rockslides closed Malibu Canyon Road.

In Southern California, police reported a surge in weather-related traffic accidents.

A California Highway Patrol spokesman said that in Los Angeles County, the agency received reports of 1,204 traffic accidents between midnight and 8:30 p.m. Christmas Day on freeways and other areas it patrols.

During the same hours the previous Thursday, when the weather was dry, the CHP received 918 accident reports.

According to the CHP, one person was killed shortly before 3 p.m. when a car flipped over as the driver was trying to enter the westbound lanes of the Santa Monica Freeway at Robertson Boulevard.

The driver’s identity was not immediately known.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported that 7,000 customers lost power at various times during the day. Areas affected included Koreatown and Studio City. Thousands of residents in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties also lost power.

In San Diego County, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said that the Scripps Ranch area and other neighborhoods charred by recent wildfires have been protected with sandbags because of the threat of mudslides, and that a river rescue team had been put on alert in case of flash flooding.

As of Thursday afternoon, the county had not had any serious weather problems, he said.

As it drew close to midnight Thursday, rescue workers found it increasingly difficult to search without endangering themselves.

“It’s extremely difficult terrain. People are sinking in mud up to their hips,” said Brierty, the fire marshal. “But we are going to keep searching.”