Evacuation of Mountain Slide Areas Considered

With another storm expected to reach Southern California early this week and the possibility that more hills could crumble, rescuers worked furiously Saturday to find the remaining victims of the Christmas Day mudslides in the San Bernardino Mountains.

After a day of digging and sifting through mud, authorities said they had found two more victims. Fire officials believe seven bodies are still buried in the mire and brush torn loose by Thursday’s torrent that swept through the St. Sophia Camp and Retreat Center in Waterman Canyon above San Bernardino.

Because of the potential for further loss of life, authorities said they were considering evacuating the canyons -- during heavy rains -- below areas stripped of vegetation in the October and November wildfires in San Bernardino County.

Peter Brierty, fire marshal for the county, said his department may ask canyon dwellers to leave their homes if a predicted storm hits as early as Monday night. Many people in those areas also had to flee their homes during the fires.

“We have to think about it. We’ll look at the water accumulation in the canyon, the predicted amount of water to be dropped and how specific areas are looking,” Brierty said. “We will respond faster and quicker than before. There is likely to be more of a hair trigger on an evacuation now.”

The area most prone to evacuation is a 30-mile stretch of mountains from Devore to east of San Bernardino.

County officials also said they were preparing to use air raid sirens and emergency broadcast announcements on radio and television stations to warn residents of heavy rains and potential mudslides.

Twenty-three people had gathered on Christmas Day at the St. Sophia Camp for a holiday celebration thrown by the facility’s caretaker, Jorge Monzon, who is still missing. Two of the dead identified Saturday were his daughters, Wendy, 17, and Raquel, 9, according to Rocky Shaw, a deputy county coroner. Monzon’s wife and another child are still missing.

Also confirmed killed was 11-year-old Jose Pablo Navarro of San Bernardino and Ramon Meza, 29, of San Bernardino County, Shaw said. He also said the body of a 12- to 14-year-old boy had been found but would not release his identity.

Meanwhile, more details emerged about the mudslide that rumbled through the KOA campground in Devore, seven miles west of Waterman Canyon.

Two people were killed there Thursday, including Carol Nuss, 57, an adjuster from Wellington, Kan., who was under contract to Allstate Insurance Co. He was in California to process claims from those who lost homes in the recent wildfires.

Also killed was Janice Stout-Bradley, 60, the campground manager, whose trailer was swept away in the slide.

Her family spent Saturday trying to find her belongings.

One item they located was her checkbook. Kari Best, 16, a granddaughter, said a recent entry was a check to a relief fund for victims of the wildfires.

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San Bernardino County fire officials said they will meet Monday to review what happened Thursday and prepare plans for warning residents when other storms sweep into the area this winter. They are concerned that homes the wildfires spared are now threatened with violent mudslides.

One possibility, they said, is to have large-scale evacuations during the next storm.

Curt Kaplan, a forecaster in the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office, said the next heavy rains could arrive Monday and possibly deliver 2 to 5 inches of rain to the mountains.

“We have a developing storm in the East Pacific. It could be very powerful,” Kaplan said.

San Bernardino County officials say they intend to dispatch firefighters and sheriff’s deputies to mountain roads when the next storm hits to call in minute-by-minute descriptions of canyon conditions to a central command center. That will enable officials to make quick decisions about evacuation orders, they said.

Emergency radio announcements will be sent to radio and television stations. The San Bernardino County Fire Department will deliver empty sandbags to residents and has stockpiled megaphones to alert residents.

Because evacuations can be dangerous, officials will analyze each storm before a decision is made.

“Our No. 1 job is to keep people from getting hurt,” Brierty said. “Evacuations are filled with risks.”

Added Cindy Beavers, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department: “If we have a rain anything close to Thursday’s, there are going to be a lot of people in danger. We don’t want to unnecessarily remove people from their homes. But, using common sense, we will do the best thing for public safety.”

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Orange tape marked debris piles Saturday that possibly contained human remains at St. Sophia Camp. Crews armed with chain saws, crowbars, shovels and rakes concentrated on two locations just 30 yards downstream from the cabin where Jorge Monzon and his friends gathered Christmas Day.

The cabin was along Waterman Creek. It was sheared off its foundation by the flood, leaving a 20-by-80-foot concrete slab strewn with boulders. An unknown number of victims had been inside.

With the help of search dogs, a body was found a few minutes after noon Saturday 200 yards downstream from Monzon’s home. A skip-load operator using a giant shovel uncovered the body while sifting through a mound of logs, clothing and mattresses.

Fire officials said the other bodies could be as far as four miles downstream from the camp. Eight of the survivors had crawled several hundred feet up a hillside through the twisted limbs of burned chaparral. A sheriff’s deputy had found them by the side of California 18 minutes after the disaster, covered in mud and shivering.

About 25 family and friends of the missing were gathered Saturday at the sheriff’s command post at Wildwood Park, at the base of the mountains.

Pastor Emilio Ruedas of Iglesias de Dios de la Profecia in San Bernardino said Ramon Meza, whose body was identified Saturday, was among the members of his congregation.

Ruedas called Meza a “hard-working man who was always there for the church and his family.” He said Meza, who was married and the father of three boys, served as an usher at Sunday services.

Others in the group would occasionally look and point toward Waterman Canyon, as if trying to explain or re-create what had happened.

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The KOA campground in Devore sits between the mouth of Cable Canyon and Interstate 215. On Saturday, the facility’s co-owner, John Gordon, said San Bernardino County officials had red-tagged the remaining structures there and that the campground would remain closed indefinitely.

Devore is at the base of the mountains where this fall’s devastating Grand Prix and Old fires burned together, leaving the hills black.

As the rains worsened Thursday, campground manager Stout-Bradley told one of her employees, Lyle Stredwick, 56, to evacuate a row of motor homes near a creek that flowed through the camp.

She had hired Stredwick 10 years earlier when he and his wife, Peggy Barlow, 57, showed up at the camp looking for work. They have lived there since.

As Stredwick walked to the trailers, the power went out.

Then he heard the rumble of boulders.

The earth shook.

And then Stredwick saw it: a massive debris flow that picked up and hurtled motor homes and buried his boss’ trailer, killing her.

Stout-Bradley’s family and friends spent Saturday trying to find her belongings.

“I can’t tell you the number of people she helped,” Barlow said. “She’s the kindest woman I ever met in my life. Someone pinch me, wake me up. This is a bad dream.”

Carol Nuss, 57, and Bev, his wife of 38 years, hopscotched from one disaster to another in their motor home for his work as a catastrophic-insurance adjuster. The couple came to California in October, just 48 hours after they returned home to Kansas from assessing damage caused by Hurricane Isabel in the Virginia area.

On Thursday, they were watching the downpour from their recreational vehicle when he noticed three nearby trailers slipping downhill.

He grabbed a flashlight and ran outside, his wife said Saturday night as she, two of their children and her sister packed up the couple’s belongings.

“He said to me, ‘Oh, my God. Those kids are in that trailer,” said Bev Nuss. As it turned out, the trailer was empty.

While Nuss was outside, their RV slid about 50 yards before crashing into a tree. Bev Nuss said she climbed onto a chair to avoid the water and mud gushing into the vehicle. She said she shined a flashlight out the window as a beacon to her husband, and thought she saw him wave his light up and down in her direction.

A few minutes later, someone came to her door to offer assistance, she said. She grabbed her coat and two dogs and headed to higher ground. Her husband was missing.

Within the next few hours, she and her children back in Kansas frantically called hospitals throughout Southern California, trying to locate Nuss.

“It didn’t surprise me when Mom said he was outside” in the rain, daughter Mylea added. “He left her, but he didn’t realize how bad it was. This doesn’t even seem possible.”

She said her father “never looked at the negative side of things. I could just see him comforting people at work. He never met a stranger.”

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After two continuous days of searching, fire officials announced that they would not search through Saturday night, a sign that any chance of finding survivors had dimmed.

A fund was set up to assist the families who lost loved ones in the Waterman Canyon mudslide.

The Waterman Canyon Mudslide Victims Relief Fund will be administered by Churches in Transformation International, a coalition in the San Bernardino and Highland areas representing more than 50 congregations.

All funds received will go directly to the families of the victims. Checks can be made out to: CITI, P.O. Box 1440, Highland CA 92346.

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Times staff writers Steve Hymon, Stephanie Chavez, Jean Guccione and David Pierson contributed to this report.