20th anniversary of deadly mudslide

By DOUGLAS W. MOTLEY

Senior Writer

December 25 (Christmas Day) marks the 20th anniversary of the Waterman Canyon mudslide, in which 14 persons lost their lives when a torrent of mud and boulders swept through Waterman Canyon.

It all began early in the afternoon on Christmas Day when a flash flood rolled through the denuded hillside left bare from the catastrophic October 2003 Old Fire, causing tons of mud, rocks and boulders to wind its way through the canyon below.

When the mud and debris reached St. Sophia Church Camp, midway through Waterman Canyon, five adults and nine children were swept away. Several bodies were reportedly discovered downstream, several miles and several months later.

The caretaker of the camp, which was closed this time of the year, had invited a group of extended family and friends to stay there. The operators of the camp (St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church) said they had no knowledge that the group was there and that the caretaker had not been authorized to let people stay there. Both the caretaker and his wife would be dead before Christmas was over.

In the early afternoon of Christmas Day, around 2 p.m., now-retired Sheriff’s Deputy Tracy Klinkhart was driving back up Highway 18 toward Crestline and was approaching the first turnout, just past the interchange with Old Waterman Canyon Road, when he discovered two adults and two youngsters without their shoes and caked with mud.

“They crawled up here and kind of ran me through what had happened,” Klinkhart said. “They said they had crawled out of the mudslide and were telling me there were possibly 15 people still down in it. They said they also saw some of them swept away.”

At the same time, Klinkhart found the survivors, a desperate call was made from the camp for help and emergency personnel began trying to get into the area. However, the crews were thwarted by rocks, mudslides, rushing water and damaged bridges in their efforts to reach the area. Fourteen people were rescued in the initial efforts on Christmas afternoon and evening.

When all was said and done, Klinkhart was awarded the governor’s prestigious Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor, the highest state award for valor awarded to a public safety officer cited by the Attorney General for their extraordinary valor above and beyond the call of duty.

THE AFTERMATH OF THE MUDSLIDE

Not much is left of the St. Sophia campground in Waterman Canyon but the painful memories remain strong, even as the camp continues its mission at a new location.

For more than 40 years, the 45-acre site served as a refuge for members of the Los Angeles-based Greek Orthodox church, which held summer and winter camps there.

A violent Pacific storm on that Christmas Day pounded the region. “By the time it got to the camp,” said John Peterson, a Los Angeles Attorney who represented the camp in litigation, “it was a moving wall of materials that was going quite rapidly and really blasted through the camp.” 

In the two decades since the mudslide, several lawsuits were filed, with the camp, Caltrans and San Bernardino County among those accused of negligence. The campground, meanwhile, remained vacant and unused until it was razed 15 years ago by order of the county. The unused campground had become a target of vagrants who looted what was left and started a fire in one building.

“It was pretty traumatic,” said Peter Koulous of the Christmas Day floods. The Long Beach resident was a member of a committee that oversaw the camp. He had attended the camp as a child, met his future wife there, sent his five children to the camp and now has grandchildren who will attend the camp at its new location. 

St. Sophia now leases a site in Crestline for a two-week summer camp but the location doesn’t meet all of its needs, Koulous said. While the church still owns the Waterman Canyon property, not much can be done with it, he added. “We had a lot of dreams of trying to rebuild it” but the church couldn’t get the required insurance to do so.

In 2010, St. Sophia won a judgment against Caltrans over the design of Highway 18, which a jury found contributed to the mudslide and flooding. Peterson said Caltrans has since taken steps to clean and enlarge culverts and install mesh on the slopes above Highway 18. 

The same jury also found the church partially responsible.

In other cases, the church paid a $13 million settlement to the families of the flood victims. Wayne McClean, an attorney who represented the families in their suit against the church, said the campground was in an unsafe location that was prone to floods.

The caretakers and his family and friends were mostly Guatemalan immigrants who spoke little English and had not been trained in how to deal with an emergency, McClean said. He believes lives could have been saved if they had been instructed to move to higher ground that was buffered by a mountain outcrop. Instead, they remained inside a house that became surrounded by raging waters. “The house became like an island,” McClean said. 

Following the flood, the county was also criticized for not doing more to warn the camp and residents of the storm. The U.S. Geological Survey and Forest Service had issued warnings of possible mudslides but county officials said they were not precise enough to be useful. A lawsuit against the county was later dismissed.

A few months after the floods, the county instituted a public warning system that allows them to make automated calls alerting residents of impending floods, mudslides or other threats.

More recently, the city of San Bernardino rebuilt the Old Waterman Canyon Road bridge, which had been damaged in the storm. The $2.4 million project faced environmental and funding delays before it could begin construction last year and was completed a few months ago.

“It’s in very good shape,” said Councilman Fred Shorett, whose Ward 4 includes the area.