Search goes on for Montecito mudslide victims; 5 people still missing

MONTECITO, Calif. (FOX 11/ AP) - Rescue workers continued Friday to slog through knee-deep ooze and use long poles to probe for bodies as the search dragged on for victims of the mudslides that slammed Montecito on Tuesday.

Seventeen people are confirmed dead and as of Friday morning, five people are missing.

On Thursday afternoon the Santa Barbara County Coroner's Office released the names of the 17 people who died in Montecito.

They said that next of kin for all 17 people were notified and the cause of death for all 17 will be listed as "Multiple traumatic injuries due to flash flood with mudslides due to recent wildfire".

The ages of the victims range from 3 to 89-years-old.

The names and ages of the victims are as follows:
Jonathan Benitez - 10 years old
Kailly Benitez - 3 years old
Martin Cabrera-Munoz - 48 years old
David Cantin - 49 years old
Sawyer Corey - 12 years old
Peter Fleurat - 73 years old
Josephine Gower - 69 years old
John McManigal - 61 years old
Alice Mitchell - 78 years old
James Mitchell - 89 years old
Mark Montgomery - 54 years old
Caroline Montgomery - 22 years old
Marilyn Ramos - 27 years old
Rebecca Riskin - 61 years old
Roy Rohter - 84 years old
Peerawat Sutthithepn - 6 years old
Richard Taylor - 67 years old

Meanwhile, family members are anxiously awaiting word on loved ones who hadn't been heard from since the onslaught early Tuesday.

"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, did not heed a voluntary evacuation warning and stayed home to celebrate Jim Mitchell's 89th birthday.

As search dogs clambered on heaps of wood that used to be homes, mud-spattered rescue teams from all over California worked their way through the ruins of Montecito, an enclave of 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.

It was left covered with thick muck, boulders, wrecked cars, splintered lumber and tree limbs in a scene Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown likened to a World War I battlefield.

Downtown, a quaint stretch of cafes and galleries normally bustling with tourists and locals was a staging area for fire trucks and heavy equipment Thursday. Fire and sheriff's officials hovered over a map spread across the hood of a truck while a fire crew made up of inmates loaded trucks for another day of debris removal.

On the edge of the disaster zone, John Flynn looked dazed as he stood in the driveway of his home. Fallen power lines crisscrossed a neighbor's yard, trees lay like bowling pins, and the air smelled of wet ash and sewage.

"We came through OK. We are the lucky ones," he said, shaking his head with the knowledge that one stray boulder on a different trajectory could have taken out his hillside home. Down the block, just the crushed roof of a home stuck out of a sea of dark brown mud.

Overall, 28 people were injured. Twelve remained hospitalized, four in critical condition.

By Wednesday, some 500 searchers had covered about 75 percent of the inundated area, authorities said. They had a long slog ahead, filled with hazards seen and unseen.

"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 a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department rescue team.

Rescue crews worked up to 12 hours a day and risked stepping on nails or shattered glass, or being exposed to raw sewage, or dealing with leaking gas, Page said.

"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."

Crews marked where bodies were found, often far away from a home, and used that information to guess where other victims might have ended up as the surging mud carried or buried them.

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.

"We totally thought we were out of the woods," said Jennifer Markham, whose home escaped damage in both disasters. "I was frozen yesterday morning thinking, 'This is a million times worse than that fire ever was.'"

The mudslides were already occurring when Santa Barbara County officials first sent emergency alerts to cellphones in the area, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

For days, the county had issued repeated warnings via social media, news media and emails about the potential for mudslides. But county emergency manager Jeff Gater said officials decided not to use the cellphone push alert system until 3:50 a.m. Tuesday out of concern it might not be taken seriously.

Only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of residents fled when ordered, and much of the damage occurred where evacuations were voluntary.

It could take days or even longer before the work is finished.

"That's always our mentality: 'Hey, we're going to find someone alive,'" Page said. "You never really know. You never know exactly what the human body is capable of."

In 2014, a mudslide in rural Oso in Washington state killed 43 people. The last body was found four months later.

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