Mudslide searchers still hope to locate survivors

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- Search and rescue teams Saturday found the bodies of two more people caught by a mudslide that smothered a mountain church camp in a canyon burned bare by fall wildfires in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Seven bodies have been recovered, and seven people remain missing, from a Christmas Day mudslide that ran through St. Sophia Camp. Another mudslide Thursday killed two people at another campground about five miles away.

It wasn't immediately known whether the bodies recovered Saturday, found near the Greek Orthodox camp's chapel, were those of children or adults. Four of the other five bodies were of children, and several children were among those still unaccounted for.

Officials called off the search Saturday night and will resume today.

"We'll continue searching," San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers said. "It's very difficult for someone to survive in these conditions and in these temperatures overnight."

Rescue crews poked through acres of mud and debris and used a helicopter to fly over the Santa Ana River because pressure from the torrents of mud could have pushed victims miles downstream.

Beavers said more rain was expected today and urged people living near the mountains to be vigilant.

"We ask people don't wait, don't put your life in jeopardy," she said. "We don't want to have another situation like the one we have here now."

Twenty-seven people, many of them Guatemalan immigrants, were celebrating Christmas with the caretaker at the church camp when the mudslide roared through, burying buildings under several feet of debris-filled mud and sweeping away two cabins. Fourteen people were rescued.

The camp was strewn with boulders and uprooted trees that had been swept down the canyon after a downpour. Fall wildfires in the area destroyed vegetation that would have helped stabilize the ground.

The camp caretaker was Jorge Monzon, a Guatemalan immigrant who had become co-pastor of the Church of God Prophecy in Van Nuys, said the Rev. Miguel Garcia, his fellow co-pastor.

The missing included Monzon, his wife, Carla, and his 6-month-old son.

The bodies of the Monzons' daughters Wendy, 17, and Raquel, 9, were found near the camp, said the Rev. Emilio Ruedas of the Church of God Prophecy in San Bernardino, which the Monzons attended.

The coroner's office on Saturday identified the bodies of the girls and those of two other people who died at the camp: 11-year-old Jose Pablo Navarro and Ramon Meza, 29, both of San Bernardino. A 12- to 14-year-old boy had not been identified Saturday afternoon.

Many of those who had been visiting Jorge Monzon at the camp were Guatemalan immigrants and nearly all the missing children were Sunday school students at the church, Ruedas said.

Church members gathered Saturday in small groups in the parking lot. Some held their heads in their hands while others read newspaper accounts of the mudslides. They refused requests for interviews.

Ruedas said that when rescuers find a body they take a picture and show it to him for initial identification, He then contacts the families.

"It's devastating, but we face many difficult problems in life, and we're dealing with this," he said. "We are very united. This is the whole church's loss."

In nearby Devore, about five miles to the west, another mudslide struck a KOA campground Thursday, killing manager Janice Arlene Stout-Bradley, 60, and Carol Eugene Nuss, 57, a father of three from Wellington, Kan.

Stout-Bradley's granddaughters Kari Best, 16, and Jamie Best, 13, said she had been giving them updates on the flood by phone Thursday, and she told them she wasn't worried. Stout-Bradley was baking brownies about 15 minutes before the mudslide hit, Jamie Best said.

The girls said county officials told them their grandmother was standing on the front porch of her mobile home when a wave of water crashed into her, killing her instantly.

Residents returned to the KOA campground Saturday to try to salvage what was left of their trailers, now crumpled and covered in mud.

Thick mud reached to the bottoms of the windows of several buildings and was higher than a car on both sides of the road up the canyon. A side of the campground store was ripped away, and toys and clothing littered the campground.

Stout-Bradley had organized a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the return of the trailer park residents after the fall wildfires. She had managed the facility for 10 years and was constantly creating odd jobs and forgoing rent there for people in need, said Rebecca Richardson, 15.

Richardson said her family lost their home about six months ago and Stout-Bradley let them park their camper at the site and gave her father a job at her adjoining horse ranch.

"She didn't want to see us anywhere else. Anyone she could help, she would," Richardson said.

Nuss, an insurance adjuster, had arrived about a month ago to handle wildfire claims. He was helping another camper when the mudslide struck, relatives said. His wife, Bev, survived the mudslide inside the couple's recreational vehicle.