Southern California rescue workers dug into a 30-foot (nine-metre) mound of mud and debris today searching for as many as 27 people who may have been buried amid homes crushed by a landslide unleashed by a week of heavy rain.
Three men were confirmed killed yesterday after the steep hillside above the seaside hamlet of La Conchita collapsed in a torrent of mud, trees and rocks that deluged the four-block area about 80 miles (130 km) north of Los Angeles.
From 20 to 27 people remain missing and could be buried in the muddy wreckage, including three young girls and two teenagers, officials and residents said. Rescue workers who were forced to pull back for several hours overnight due to fears of a second mudslide returned in the predawn hours to drop microphones and fiber-optic cameras into crevices in the wreckage.
By morning, as the skies finally began to clear, 75 emergency workers were back at work on the mound with shovels, picks, chain saws and their bare hands in a race to find the missing in the narrow slip of land between the Pacific Ocean and hills south of Santa Barbara.
Authorities said the slide had smashed houses together, making it harder to dig but also creating more potential airspaces in which survivors might still be found. Of the 14 injured in the slide, 12 were taken to hospital and two were listed in critical condition. It was the second landslide to hit the area in a decade.
A retaining wall built after a 1995 slide was swept away by Monday's torrent of rain-soaked hillside.