CA Swift-water Rescue

[NJFFSA16]

Mother, baby rescued from raging California storm water
With BC-CA--California Storm, BC-CA--California Storm-La Conchita
AP Photos LA106 and CAONT102
gfvarsfojsa1
SAN DIMAS, Calif. (AP) - The story of a mother and her infant
son plucked from raging flood waters after their inflatable rescue
raft capsized took a bizarre twist Tuesday, with a firefighter
blaming the woman for the accident.
Television footage showed Erica Henderson struggling to keep her
8-week-old son's tiny head above water as the two were swept down
the San Dimas Creek after the raft, piloted by a firefighter,
flipped in the roiling water.
Henderson, with her son William strapped to her chest in a baby
carrier, washed up on a sand bar within minutes and was pulled from
the creek by members of Los Angeles County's swift-water rescue
team.
Neither was seriously injured. They recovered Tuesday at Pomona
Valley Community Hospital.
Henderson said on "Good Morning America" early Tuesday that at
one point she feared her son was dead and tried to resuscitate him
as they were dragged downstream.
"The last time we hit the embankment, the force was so bad I
knew he swallowed water," Henderson told CBS.
"I thought I was going to lose him at that point and I felt
like if I pushed on his chest, it would help. And it did. I pumped
his chest with my hand and he spit up some water."
But Henderson canceled a news conference after a member of the
swift-water rescue team criticized her and her husband for
hampering the rescue. The husband's name wasn't immediately
available.
Larry Collins, coordinator of the swift-water rescue team, told
KNBC-TV that the baby's father was "verbally and physically
violent" and physically assaulted two firefighters. The couple,
who live in a cabin in San Dimas Canyon, had called 911 and were
waiting on the river bank when firefighters arrived.
"We had uncooperative parents that we've had to deal with
before," Collins told the station. "The children needed to be
taken out of there."
Collins said Henderson eventually agreed to leave the cabin, but
only if she could hold her baby herself. But he said Henderson
caused the raft to flip because she was "was uncooperative to
start with ... and she wasn't following instructions."
Henderson's husband - who was supposed to take a second raft -
decided to remain at the cabin with the couple's 2-year-old
daughter after seeing what had happened to his wife, according to
television reports.
Capt. Mark Savage, spokesman for the Fire Department, said that
Collins should not have made the comments about Henderson and her
husband.
"Yes, they might have been (uncooperative) but we don't need to
be going public with that aspect," Savage said. "We're not going
down that road any further."
Collins did not immediately return messages from The Associated
Press on Tuesday.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[FireH2O]

I heard on the radio today that a woman from Palmdale, CA was being rescued from the roof of her car by a chopper. She was holding her baby during the rescue but couldn't hold on to the baby. The baby did not survive.

The crazy part of the story was that she drove around a police barrier that would have prevented her from being in that predicament in the first place. I believe I heard the criminal charges were pending.


NJFFSA16, Maybe you can verify this story. I heard it on KGO Radio (San Francisco)

[NJFFSA16]

By PAUL CHAVEZ and JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
Associated Press Writers
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A 2-year-old girl drowned after slipping from
her mother's grip and falling into the raging floodwaters. A
passer-by pulled a 5-year-old stuck in neck-high mud to safety. A
man was swept 2 miles down a swollen, icy river before being
rescued.
Emergency crews and good Samaritans have attempted dozens of
dramatic rescues in the series of storms that have drenched
California in the past week and killed at least 12 people. Many
rescues have had happy endings. But in some cases, the violence of
the storms proved too much to overcome.
That was the case outside Los Angeles on Sunday, when the little
girl fell victim to the floodwaters.
Rescue workers found the girl, her two siblings and their mother
stranded on top of their car, floating down a fast-moving wash in
Palmdale.
The rescue team was using a helicopter to hoist the mother to
safety when she lost her grip on her daughter, who then fell into
the wash. The mother and other children were rescued along with an
unidentified man; the girl's body was found downstream three hours
later. The girl was identified Monday as Jamaia B. Davis of
Palmdale.
"It's a very tragic event that unfolded - for everybody," Los
Angeles County Fire Inspector Mike McCormick said. "Rescues like
this really hit hard and we definitely want to try to save as many
people as we can. We don't want to lose anybody, especially a
child. It really hurts."
The mother, who was not immediately identified, had driven
around barricades to try to reach a flooded-out road, sheriff's Lt.
Don Ford said. Authorities were weighing whether to bring charges
against her in the toddler's death.
In the San Dimas Canyon area, another daring rescue of a baby
ended happily. A toddler who fell into raging storm waters was
snatched up by a firefighter who carried her to safety as he
gingerly made his way through the swift current. The baby was
hospitalized but was expected to recover.
The firefighter who made the rescue was in the area to help
evacuate people staying in five cabins in San Dimas Canyon.
In still another successful rescue, firefighters and other
rescuers worked furiously Sunday to save a driver whose BMW plunged
off Interstate 5 into a Southern California creek and got carried
away by the swift current. The water was moving so fast that it
tore the man's pants off.
Capt. Mike Yule of the Santa Fe Springs Fire Department and
other crews hurried to a bridge two miles downstream to drop safety
lines. Others ran along a bike path to keep tabs on the man, the
freezing water weakening him by the second.
As the man drifted toward the bridge, he clutched the rope. A
group of firefighters and bystanders pulled him up. But just a few
feet from the top, he lost his hold and plunged backward more than
10 feet into the icy torrent.
He passed under the bridge. Rescue crews threw the man a life
vest with a rope attached, and pulled him to safety. They let out
whoops of joy after completing the rescue.
"There are certain times in this job when you wouldn't change
this job for anything," Yule said. "And this was one of them. It
was an absolute feeling to be able to make a difference. It's
indescribable."
The man's young daughter and her friend had been plucked from
the creek shortly after the accident.
In yet another rescue, a passer-by who saw a two-story home
outside Los Angeles demolished in a mudslide Sunday pulled a
5-year-old girl from the neck-high muck. Firefighters also rescued
the girl's brother and 33-year-old father.
David Kapner told KNBC-TV that he was almost buried in mud
himself while rescuing the girl. "I just talked to the Lord, told
him that if I died out there, if I died helping them, then hey, you
know, it's for a good cause at least," Kapner said.
In neighboring Nevada, the storm caused an avalanche that killed
a 13-year-old boy who was knocked Sunday from a ski lift while
snowboarding. Two other people were found alive shortly after the
wave of snow hit at the ski resort about 45 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.
McCormick, the Los Angeles County fire official, said the
swift-water rescue teams are loaded with county lifeguards who
normally oversee 98 miles of beach in the warmer months - making
them perfect for flood rescues.
"Those guys are professional swimmers and we got them,"
McCormick said. "We've got every tool."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[DeputyChiefGonzo]

Here's an idea...

The tv networks and the cable tv channels get together for just an hour and broadcast a show about the dangers of swift water.

It would save lives and keep us out of unnecessary peril....










yeah, I'm dreaming again....

[NJFFSA16]

LA CONCHITA, Calif. (AP) - Rescuers searching with shovels,
high-tech cameras and their bare hands found the bodies of three
children and an adult before dawn Wednesday, bringing the death
toll from a mudslide in this seaside hamlet to 10, an official
said.
Ventura County Fire Captain Danny Rodriguez said the bodies were
found as crews worked around the clock for a second straight night,
swarming the debris pile under clear skies and powerful klieg
lights.
Officials said about 11 people remained missing after Monday's
30-foot mudslide, which was triggered by five days of nearly
nonstop rain that has killed 25 people in California since Friday.
The victims found Wednesday were believed to be the wife and
three daughters of La Conchita resident Jimmie Wallet, who had
released a statement thanking the searchers.
"I'm very pleased with the hard work and all the effort in
finding my family," Wallet said in the statement relayed to The
Associated Press by Ventura County sheriff's chaplain Ron Matthews.
Wallet, 37, had been searching alongside firefighters for his
missing 36-year-old wife Michelle and their three daughters, Hanna,
10, Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was to tour the area Wednesday.
The days of torrential rains also triggered fatal traffic
accidents all across the state, knocked out power to hundreds of
thousands, imperiled hillside homes and caused flash floods.
In La Conchita, firefighters remained hopeful they might still
find at least some people alive, while acknowledging that any
survivors would have to be found quickly.
"The rescuers are continuing to find some voids between the
collapsed structures," Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper said
Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show.
Ten people were injured in the slide, which came down like a
curving, rolling waterfall onto the tiny town between Highway 101
and a coastal bluff in Ventura County.
Fifteen homes were destroyed and 16 were damaged. Roper said the
slide rolled homes over and intermixed debris, hindering efforts to
identify the rubble of specific houses.
Early Wednesday, chain saws buzzed as bulldozers and backhoes
crunched through sections of the debris pile that were being
cleared from the town, having failed to yield any bodies or
survivors after more than a day of probing. Diesel exhaust from
their equipment hung heavily in the air.
Residents and families also picked through the muddy rubble. One
resident pulled out a torn curtain, others dug up a broken clothes
hanger, a stack of recipes and a backpack. Nearby, an enormous
passenger bus lay on its side, a white sedan crushed underneath.
The painstaking search through layer upon layer of muck was made
more difficult by the jumble of stiff pieces of homes that had
mixed with the mud, including baseboards, doors and frames.
Rescuers tried to carefully scoop out parts of the pile to make
sure they checked sections of trapped air where a survivor might be
able to breathe.
The searchers were using dogs trained to search for live victims
and others that can locate cadavers. If rescuers believed they had
located an air pocket, both types of dogs would be called over to
determine if anyone was nearby, said Capt. Bill Monahan, head of
the Los Angeles County Fire Department canine unit.
Monahan said he had been up for four days straight working on
rescue efforts elsewhere during Southern California's record
downpours, before he was called to La Conchita.
"It's been four days of death and destruction," he said.
Rescuers were given a break Tuesday when the rains finally
stopped. National Weather Service forecaster Stuart Seto said clear
skies were expected to remain through at least the weekend.
Still, the damage was felt far from California.
Muddy rivers roared through towns along the Nevada-Arizona-Utah
lines on Tuesday, flooding homes in the Nevada resort town of
Mesquite and forcing the evacuation of about 100 people in nearby
Overton.
Seven of Arizona's 15 counties have declared states of emergency
to qualify for cleanup funding and aid, with the hardest hit in the
northwestern tip of the state and central regions.
Officials were testing wells in the Beaver Dam area to make sure
none were contaminated when a sewage plant that serves the
community of 1,500 was damaged by flood waters. Some 14 houses were
destroyed or washed away.
National Guard helicopters were called in to airlift residents
in two areas of southern Utah's Washington County that were
stranded by washed-out bridges and roads. The county was declared a
state disaster area.
"It's a situation that one must see to believe," Gov. Jon
Husman said. "Property has been lost, homes have been lost,
families have been relocated.
--
Associated Press Writer Greg Risling contributed to this report.

[NJFFSA16]

By The Associated Press
A look at those who died during the relentless rainstorms that
pounded California between Jan. 7 and Tuesday.
- Jan. 7: Four-year-old Ingrid Paredes died in Chula Vista when
the car she was in slid off the rain-slicked Interstate 805.
- Jan. 7: A woman died and her male partner was rescued after a
34-foot sailboat was caught in heavy seas and went aground near the
central coast town of Cambria. Her name has not been released.
- Jan. 7: A 60-year-old Richmond woman died after the driver of
a Jeep Cherokee skidded more than 50 feet on a rain-soaked roadway
in Oakland, hitting the Buick station wagon in which the woman was
a passenger.
- Jan. 7: Anthony Miranda, 50, of Modesto was killed when a car
and pickup truck collided in Modesto. Investigators said rain was
not falling at the time, but the cloudy sky made it very dark and
the roadway was wet.
- Jan. 8: The body of an unidentified man was pulled out of the
swollen Tijuana River; he is believed to have been with a group of
illegal border crossers.
- Jan. 8: Andrei Natali, 20, of Ojai, died after he was carried
off by the swift-moving Matilija River in Ventura County.
- Jan. 8: A fiery crash on the Ventura Freeway in Glendale
killed two people. A disabled 2002 Ford Mustang was rear-ended by a
1991 Honda that burst into flames, killing its male driver. He has
not been identified. The driver of the Mustang, 31-year-old Anik
Jeannine Proffit, also died.
- Jan. 8: A collapsed hillside in Los Angeles' Elysian Park
area, near Dodger Stadium, crushed and buried a homeless man under
a concrete-like mound of mud and rock. He was identified as
42-year-old Jeffrey Lynn Earwood.
- Jan. 9: On the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, a 21-year-old
Rancho Dominguez man was killed and four people were injured after
their vehicle skidded on water or mud, hit a telephone pole and
ended up in the surf. His name has not been released.
- Jan. 9: In Los Angeles, 79-year-old Refugio Quero was run over
by her husband who did not see her in the driving rain. Quero was
opening a gate for her husband's car when he hit her.
- Jan. 9: In Palmdale, on the edge of the Mojave Desert
northeast of Los Angeles, rescue workers in a helicopter plucked a
woman and two of her children from a car floating down a
rain-filled wash, but the woman lost her grip on her 2-year-old
daughter, who drowned. The child was identified as Jamaia B. Davis
of Palmdale.
- Jan. 10: In La Conchita, a small community of houses wedged
onto a spit of land between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, a
massive mudslide Monday killed 10 people. Victims identified by the
Ventura County Medical Examiner's office include Charles Womack,
51, John Morgan, 56, Michael Alvis, 53, Cristina Kennedy, 45, and
Mechelle Wallet, 37, and her daughters Hannah Jade, 10, Raven
Violet, 6, and Paloma Julie, 2.
- Jan. 10: In San Bernardino County, a woman drowned after she
tried to drive her car across a swollen creek. The body of
35-year-old Maureen Martinez has not been found.
- Jan. 10: In the City of Industry, a van hit 53-year-old
Valente Jacquez from behind as he exited his car after a
rain-related accident on the Pomona Freeway.
- Jan. 10: Daniel Joshua McCutchen, 30, died after he tried to
swim across the raging Topanga Creek and was washed away, sheriff's
officials said. His body was found by paramedics wedged in a tree
in Topanga Canyon.
- Jan. 10: Yaquelin Perez Villaneuva, 8, of Yakima, Wash., died
after a driver slammed his pickup truck into her family's minivan
while it was stopped for chain-control screening in Redding.
Officials were deciding whether to charge Sidney Eugene Clary, 37,
who was trying to retrieve his cell phone charger when he hit the
minivan at between 55 mph and 65 mph.
- Jan. 11: In Los Angeles, a 52-year-old man died of injuries he
sustained in a rain-related traffic accident on Interstate 5 on
Jan. 9.
- Jan. 11: In San Diego, an 18-year-old woman identified as
Lydia Arlene Mendoza was killed when the car she was riding in ran
into a 50-foot-tall tree that fell on California 163. Three others
were injured - two seriously.
---
Sources: Coroners and sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles,
Riverside, Ventura, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus,
Alameda and Shasta counties.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[nmfire]

As usual, most of those were due to gross wilful and wanton stupidity.

[sbfdco1]

It's unfortunate that Ignorance is bliss. Hats off to the brothers out there, keep up the great work!

[NJFFSA16]

UPLAND, Calif. (AP) - A 35-year-old woman and her 12-year-old
son, out for a Martin Luther King Day picnic at Mount Baldy, fell
into a fast-moving, rain-swollen creek on Monday, a day after an
11-year-old boy fell into the same creek and drowned, authorities
said.
Rescuers from the Los Angeles County Fire Department frantically
searched for the pair in San Antonio Creek until darkness when they
suspended the effort, said supervising dispatcher Ed Pickett.
Crews from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department
continued searching late into the night, said supervising
dispatcher Tom Betty.
Witnesses told authorities Frank Zavala of El Monte had stopped
to wash his hands in the creek when he lost his footing and tumbled
in. His mother, Sibilina Flores, jumped in after him and both were
quickly swept away by the rain-swollen water that was moving as
fast as 40 mph.
The pair disappeared in front of the woman's husband and
15-year-old daughter, said Carl Flores, a battalion chief with the
Los Angeles County Fire Department.
"They're torn up," Flores said, adding they waited for hours
for word about the pair before leaving the area.
On Sunday, an 11-year-old boy drowned in the same creek after he
was swept under by currents moving up to 25 mph, authorities said.
The currents carried the body of Marcelo Bautista into the San
Antonio Dam.
He and a 14-year-old boy were skipping back and forth over part
of the half-mile creek near Mount Baldy Village when he fell. His
father was able to grab his son but the boy slipped from his hand,
authorities said. The man and the older boy were able to pull
themselves out of the frigid waters.
The creek, 45 miles northeast of Los Angeles, was swollen by the
heavy rains that struck the region earlier this month and by runoff
from melting mountain snow.
The speed of the water and its chilly temperature makes the
chance of survival for any length of time extremely difficult, said
Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman Edward Osorio.
"With the combination of deep water, a rugged creek bottom and
all types of snags with trees and trash, we'd like to be
optimistic, and hope that someone can hold onto one of those
snags," Osorio said. "But those same snags can hold you down and
keep you under the water."
Two flotation buoys thrown into the water Monday to test the
creek's speed were never located, Osorio said.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[MtnRsq]

The bodies of Sibilina Flores and her son were both recovered today by members of the SBSO and SBCoFD.

Marcelo Bautista is still missing. Crews from LASO ESD and SAR teams will be continuing search efforts tomorrow.

There were people playing in the water less than 1/2 mile from where searchers were looking for Marcelo today. I wouldn't be surprised if more people don't find themselves in the same situation sometime in the next few days.

Sibilina and her son were swept away just a few miles upstream from where the efforts to find Marcelo were underway. Even a massive and rapid response proved fruitless.

With all of the rain/snow and 70-80 temps in the local mountains the streams are raging. Most of the drainages are continuous white water through channels filled with snags and debris. Strainers everywhere.

Sad.

[NJFFSA16]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The sun began poking through the clouds
Wednesday as California emergency crews shifted into cleanup mode
after a six-day drenching that killed at least nine people,
destroyed dozens of houses and flooded roads and airports.
The Transportation Department hurried to clear at least 20 major
roads closed by mudslides and flooding, and in Malibu, crews
prepared to destroy a boulder the size of a house that dangled
precariously above the Pacific Coast Highway, held back by only a
retaining wall. Crews also worked to fill thousands of potholes -
some the size of cars.
Engineers fanned out across Los Angeles to assess whether houses
on slipping soil were still habitable. More than 100 homes were
temporarily uninhabitable or safe only for limited entry.
Los Angeles city fire spokesman Brian Humphrey said some
ambulance crews had been diverted to work as reconnaissance teams
to spot signs of flooding and mudslides.
Firefighters, meanwhile, were working 24-hour shifts with little
time to eat or even use the restroom. On Monday, the heaviest day
of rain, the department received nearly 2,000 calls - twice the
normal amount, Humphrey said.
Rain fell early in the day Wednesday across part of Southern
California but was expected to taper off as the storm's center
headed east along the California-Mexico border.
The storms began last Thursday, bringing 9.14 inches by
Wednesday morning to a city where the average for an entire year is
about 15 inches. Damage in Los Angeles County alone since Jan. 1
was estimated at $52.5 million, including up to $10 million in
damage caused by the latest storm.
In Ventura County, the small Santa Paula airport remained closed
after more than 155 feet of runway crumbled into the rushing Santa
Clara River. Mudslides forced Amtrak to suspend train service
between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara through at least Thursday.
Among those killed were a man who was driving when a eucalyptus
tree fell on his pickup truck in San Diego County and a 16-year-old
girl who was doing homework in an apartment bedroom when boulders
hit her home near Irvine.
Rainfall since July 1, when California begins its yearly
rainfall measurements, now totals 34.36 inches - more than Seattle
or Portland and the most in Los Angeles since 1889-90. The record
for a single year - 38.18 inches - was set in 1883-84.
South of the border in Tijuana, Mexico, authorities reported at
least seven homes had collapsed in landslides and more than 150
people were evacuated.
---
Associated Press Writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report.