Two dead as mudslide buries Californian town

A huge mudslide crashed down on homes in a coastal hamlet with terrifying force, killing at least two people with 12 missing, as a Pacific storm hammered Southern California for a fourth day.

Ventura County Fire Department Chief Bob Roper said as many as a dozen residents were missing in the mudslide that pummelled a four-block area of homes in tiny La Conchita, about 70 miles north west of Los Angeles. Nine people were injured, including a 60-year-old man buried for three hours.

“It lasted a long time. It was slow-moving. The roofs of the houses were crashing and creaking real loud and there was a huge rumble sound,” said Robert Cardoza, a building worker who was clearing debris from a nearby highway.

As rescuers combed the debris, geology experts with air horns watched the hillside above, ready to sound an alarm if it moved.

The mudslide brought the number of dead from the latest wave of storms to 11 in California. The storms have sent rainfall totals to astonishing levels, turning normally mild Southern California into a giant flood zone.

The hillside in La Conchita cascaded down like a brown river as authorities were evacuating about 200 residents from the area. Trees and vegetation were carried away, leaving huge gashes of raw earth on the bluff.

Some residents made their way from the area clutching pets, luggage or clothing as the huge mass of mud bore down. Some huddled together or cried as they talked on cell phones. Fifteen to 20 houses were hit by the slide.

“You could hear people screaming and crying out, people honking their horns you know from on the highway and everybody looking up and running as fast as they can to get out,” said Kathleen Wood, a resident of La Conchita.

Rescuers dropped listening devices into the rubble to try to locate victims before another downpour of up to two inches of rain was expected before dawn today.

La Conchita is a slip of a town pressed between a highway and a towering coastal bluff. Several houses were damaged by a mudslide during powerful storms in the 1990s.

The destruction at La Conchita was the worst disaster of the storms so far, but mudslides and flooding were reported throughout the region, blocking road and rail travel and forcing a shutdown of interstate fuel supply lines.

California’s death toll also included a two-year-old girl who slipped from her mother’s grasp as rescuers tried to hoist them from a car submerged on a road outside Los Angeles.