Divers Pull 1 of 7 Bodies From Icy Sierra Lake : Tragedy: Sheriff says all the victims may not be found. Meanwhile, close-knit community is in shock.

Rescue teams pulled the first of seven bodies from the frigid waters of this eastern Sierra Nevada fishing lake Tuesday, as friends of the drowning victims kept vigil at lakeside and counselors moved in to assist survivors at a youth camp that lost three students and two adult employees in a holiday tragedy.

Throughout the day, divers clad in bright blue insulated suits probed under a shroud of ice for the bodies of the victims, who had not been seen since they slipped beneath the lake’s surface shortly after noon Monday. Other rescue workers manned helicopters and a special air-propelled boat that skimmed over the treacherously thin surface.

The search was called off at dusk and will resume at 8 a.m. today.

The body discovered was that of U.S. Forest Service employee Clay Cutter, whose wife, Terry, had watched as her husband ran across the frozen lake to try to aid three floundering teen-agers--only to be trapped himself when the ice collapsed. Another three would-be rescuers also drowned.

Outside the Cutters’ lake-front home Tuesday, friends sobbed as rescue workers lifted the body into the airboat and enclosed it in a yellow bag. Cutter’s body was recovered after rescue divers found a rope floating on the lake. They pulled at the line, and found Cutter at the end, according to one rescuer, Lt. Glenn Barnes of the Washoe County, Nev., Sheriff’s Department. Cutter’s hand, he said, was still tightly clasping the nylon rope.

As delicate recovery work proceeded on the ice, California Air National Guard crews combed the perimeter of the lake. Officials said they were responding to statements by witnesses who said they saw one of the seven victims make it to shore. But no evidence was found of a survivor.

“We searched the perimeter real thoroughly and we didn’t see anything,” said Maj. Steve Hussey, who is attached to the reserves at Moffet Naval Air Station near San Jose.

As the investigation into the deaths deepened, speculation centered on whether the youngsters were properly supervised on the holiday hiking trip. It was not yet known, authorities said, whether the counselors who died trying to save the teen-agers had been out on the ice with them, or had run onto the ice only when they saw trouble.

Local residents said Convict Lake is known to be dangerous in winter. Its ice frequently melts and refreezes, making its thickness and safety suspect, residents said.

“These are the things we’re trying to find out: How much supervision did they have? Were they out on the ice alone? How many were out on the ice at one time?” said Mono County Sheriff’s Investigator John Rutkowski.

The executive director of Camp O’Neal, the private residential treatment center where the teen-agers lived, said the outing included half of the 34 students who lived there, as well as some supervisors. One of the supervisors was an “experienced back-country guide,” said Bobbi Trott, the executive director.

At a press conference, Trott repeatedly sidestepped questions about the conduct of her staff. “We’re relying on the sheriffs to do their investigation,” she said.

The trip was meant as “a holiday outing, a fun time for kids,” she added.

The sheriff’s office and other agencies, meanwhile, began releasing the names of the dead.

The tragedy, among the worst drowning incidents in the nation in at least a decade, began at noon Monday when the hiking teen-agers ventured out onto the newly frozen surface. The camp, which is located across U.S. 395 from Convict Lake, handles troubled youths ages 12 to 18 from several counties.

As they played on the ice, four of them suddenly fell through. One managed to clamber out but three were trapped in the frigid water. Authorities identified the dead youngsters as David C. Sellers, 15, of Tulare County and Shawn Diaz, 15 of Dinuba, and an unnamed 13-year-old from Redlands. The 16-year-old who escaped the frigid lake was not identified.

In addition, Mono County Sheriff-Coroner Martin Strelneck identified two of the adult victims, Dave Meyers and Randy Porter, as camp counselors who had tried to rescue the teen-agers. The other victims were two would-be rescuers--volunteer fireman Vidar Anderson, 58, of Sunnyslope and Cutter, a 31-year-old U.S. Forest Service employee.

Another volunteer firefighter who survived several minutes in the frigid water was released Tuesday from Centinela Mammoth Hospital in Mammoth Lakes, about five miles north of here.

Shortly after his release, Cris Baitx told The Times that he had to punch through the ice three times to grab breaths of air as rescuers crept toward him.

“It was a bad scene and it just kept getting worse,” he said. Baitx, part of a volunteer force that arrived well before better-equipped rescuers, said he felt he had to reach out to the struggling youths and counselors despite the risk.

“Just watching these heads bobbing up and down was too much,” Baitx said.

“We figured we should have waited for the rescue team. But when people are bobbing up and down, you know what’s next.”

The search for victims had been called off at dusk Monday because of fears that more would be lost to the lake. But at 7 a.m. Tuesday, new rescue teams began converging on the Mammoth Lakes sheriff’s substation. Within two hours, a helicopter from the China Lake Naval Weapons Station was circling the lake, pinpointing with buoys the holes where the victims had disappeared.

The airboat from the Truckee Fire District and a special diving team from Washoe County then moved onto the ice, recovering the first body by 11 a.m. and searching throughout the day for others.

Sheriff-Coroner Strelneck said the chances of finding all of the bodies are slim, given the lake’s depth and the dangerous conditions. As if to emphasize that, the skies, clear and wind-free at dawn, had clouded over by noon.

“We think it will be a very difficult operation,” Strelneck said.

The conditions remained treacherous and the progress frustratingly slow all day Tuesday. Divers were limited to 15 minutes in the icy water because of the cold and the effects of the high altitude.

The first of five crews to dive under the ice Tuesday was forced to return to the surface after only six minutes, when the air regulators on their diving equipment froze. The malfunction sent compressed air streaming from the tanks, endangering the divers.

“I was down for about six minutes and it will be three hours before I’m able to dive again,” said Carl Barrett of the Washoe County sheriff’s diving team. Divers were forced to stay out of the water after each dive until their blood gases returned to normal, he said.

Barrett and his partner were diving in about 77 feet of water near where the adult rescue workers were believed to have fallen through the ice, he said. Visibility was 12 to 15 feet, but Barrett said no bodies were visible.

“Nothing but sand, nothing,” he said when asked what he saw.

Divers were sent down in teams of two from a rubber boat, which carried other diving team members who monitored the safety of their colleagues. During the attempts Tuesday, divers began at the points where the adult victims were believed to have fallen, and slowly worked their way outward in a circular pattern. They have not yet searched the deeper area where the teen-agers were last seen.

Sheriff’s deputies said they believe the bodies may have sunk to the bottom of the lake, which is up to 140 feet deep. Because of its equipment, the Washoe County team is able to dive only to depths of about 80 feet. Late Tuesday, officials here sent for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s rescue team, whose equipment allows dives of up to 300 feet. The team was scheduled to depart Los Angeles on Tuesday night.

“We’re kind of convinced that they’re not in this shallower part, that they’re going to be found in deeper water,” said Glen Vogler, chief deputy of the Washoe County sheriff’s team.

Skaters and hikers often test the frozen lake, as the camp youths apparently did on Monday, local officials said.

“People do that and get away with it quite often,” said Mono County Sheriff’s Lt. Terry Padilla.

In the close-knit Sierra community, the impact of the deaths hit home Tuesday.

“The town is in shock right now,” said Mammoth Lakes town manager Paul Marangella. “This accident has touched everyone. . . . Most of us know each other. Any kind of tragedy like this has a tremendous effect.”

At Camp O’Neal, a spokesman said residents and counselors were undergoing therapy Tuesday with specialists.

“They’re very devastated,” said Almeda De Cell, a clinical psychologist counseling the youths.

Mono County Sheriff’s Investigator John Daniels, who interviewed some of the teen-agers who had been on the lake, said they displayed a wide range of emotions.

Some adopted a tough, stoic posture and appeared to be “hardened young boys,” Daniels said.

Others took the tragedy harder, Daniels said. “Some had lost their best friends.”

Among friends and relatives of the other victims, grief was slightly more public.

Cutter worked as a snow ranger for the U.S. Forest Service during the winter; in the summer he was a Forest Service firefighter. His supervisor, Dean McAlister, said Tuesday that Cutter had rescued people from the lake before, but never under icy conditions.

On Monday, friends said, youngsters had banged on his door to warn him that people had fallen through the ice. He left his house with the black-and-red rope he had used on earlier rescues, the same rope that would lead to the discovery of his body.

His wife, Terry, had run to the shore and watched through binoculars Monday afternoon as her husband struggled to rescue the victims. As his body was pulled from the lake Tuesday, she remained in seclusion in the couple’s home. A group of friends kept reporters away from the family, which includes three young daughters.

“This is hard to believe, especially when it’s someone you know, someone you worked with,” said Tim McMullen, a fire management officer for the Inyo National Forest.

Friends of the other adult rescuer, volunteer firefighter Anderson, also rallied around his family. Anderson, a retired school bus driver, lived in nearby Sunnyslope with his wife, daughter and granddaughter.

Few knew the identities of the victims Monday night, but when the names of the dead were released Tuesday, the shock broadened.

“Everyone in town lost a friend in this thing,” said Remington Slifka, general manager of the Convict Lake Resort. “It will be hard for the town to recover. This lake is very special . . . it will be very hard to think of the lake in those terms again.”

Slifka and others said the lake’s dangers should have been well known. Convict Lake is fickle, they said. A week ago it was frozen over, but this past Saturday most of the ice was gone. It did not freeze again until Sunday night, Slifka said.

“Convict Lake is famous for being water one day, ice the next day,” said Slifka. “ . . . All of the locals know this.”

But Marsha Reiten, a friend of the Cutter family, reminded others that the teen-age victims were from outside the area.

“Every parent ought to keep their kids off of ice,” she said. “Don’t let your kids on ice.”

Times staff writer Sheryl Stolberg in Convict Lake and researcher Tracy Thomas contributed to this story.

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