The two fire crews were not required to get out of their vehicles and search for Norma Bustamante and daughter Ruby because the section of Highway 60 where their car crashed is too dangerous to travel on foot, according to a Riverside County fire department report Thursday.
Firefighters were sent to investigate April 4 after the California Highway Patrol got a call from someone who said they saw an accident in the area. The body of Bustamante and her dehydrated daughter were found April 13 in wreckage down a steep ravine.
``It appears so far that the extraordinary nature of this accident is the reason the crews were unable to identify indications of the accident location,'' fire Capt. Rick Vogt said Thursday.
The Bustamante family said a more thorough search, including helicopters, should have been conducted in the Moreno Valley area, some 70 miles east of Los Angeles.
Vogt said Friday that the highway patrol decides whether to deploy helicopters.
The highway patrol, which has not completed its investigation, did not send a helicopter because the caller who reported the accident did not say where it had occurred, said Chris Blondon, a highway patrol spokesman.
