Gruelling task
Hundreds search for victims of California mudslide.
Hundreds of searchers continued the gruelling work of hunting for survivors and digging up bodies in the sea of mud and wreckage left by flash flooding in this wealthy coastal enclave.
Muck-spattered searchers from around the state slogged through knee-deep ooze yesterday, poking long poles into the mud to probe for victims.
Search dogs clambered on shattered heaps of wood that used to be homes.
The death toll from Tuesday’s pre-dawn flash flood rose to 17 on Wednesday as more bodies were found. Another 17 were still reported missing.
“It’s just waiting and not knowing, and the more I haven’t heard from them – we have to find them,” said Kelly Weimer, whose elderly parents’ home was wrecked.
The couple, Jim and Alice Mitchell, didn’t heed a voluntary evacuation warning and stayed home on Monday to celebrate Jim’s 89th birthday.
Weimer hoped to find them in a shelter or hospital.
Other people were rescued after being trapped for more than a day in their homes.
Devon Crail, 39, of Santa Barbara came back to his parents’ home on Wednesday to gather belongings and medication they weren’t able to take with them when they managed to leave that morning.
“I talked to them at about four in the morning,” he said. “They had tried to open the front door to leave and the mud started pouring in. They were able to force the door closed and stuck it out until sunrise when they got out.”
Search and rescue teams were working their way through the muck and wreckage of Montecito, a wealthy enclave of 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.
However, the flood left it strewn with mud, boulders, wrecked cars, trashed buildings and tree limbs in a scene that Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has compared to a World War I battlefield.
By Wednesday, some 500 searchers had covered about 75% of the inundated area, authorities said.
However, they had a long and arduous slog ahead – literally.
“A lot of the street signs are gone, the roads are impassable. It all has to be done on foot,” said Deputy Dan Page, chief of the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team of the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, which sent help to the scene.
“We’ve gotten multiple reports of rescuers falling through manholes that were covered with mud, swimming pools that were covered up with mud,” said Anthony Buzzerio, a Los Angeles County fire battalion chief.
“The mud is acting like a candy shell on ice cream. It’s crusty on top but soft underneath, so we’re having to be very careful.”
A dozen people were hospitalised at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and four were in critical condition, Dr Brett Wilson said.
People in Montecito had counted themselves lucky last month after the biggest wildfire in California history spared the town.
But it was the fire that led to the mudslide, by burning away vegetation. — AP