Sad Discovery In Slide Rubble

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 the wife and three daughters of La Conchita resident Jimmie Wallet, Ventura County sheriff's chaplain Ron Matthews told The Associated Press.

Wallet had said he had left his wife and three daughters to buy ice cream and was leaving the store when he saw the river of earth curve toward his block. He ran toward his home but it was buried.

Wallet, 37, had been searching alongside firefighters for his missing 37-year-old wife Mechelle, and daughters Hannah, 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.

"It is possible for a person to survive if they're in an air pocket for about 4-5 days, so we're going to keep digging until we get through the rubble and see if there is anybody left," Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Foy told CBS Radio station KNX.

Witnesses report that first came the sickening crack of splitting earth, and then a sudden roar as cascading dirt and vegetation swallowed home after home. The dirt flowed like a waterfall, engulfing more than a dozen homes in a four-block area of the tiny town between Highway 101 and a coastal bluff in Ventura County 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

"It was like the hillside turned to liquid. It all came down," Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna told CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

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.

"They're not actively digging on the pile, but they are helping with the debris removal after it's been dug away by the firefighters," said Foy.

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 Huntsman said. "Property has been lost, homes have been lost, families have been relocated.