Teens Were Told of Thin Ice, Camp Says : Tragedy: Five more bodies are recovered from Convict Lake. Investigation centers on amount of supervision of camp youngsters.

As rescue divers lifted five more bodies from the frigid depths of this Sierra lake Wednesday, officials at the residential camp attended by the lake’s teen-age victims said the youths were warned shortly before their deaths that the ice on which they were playing was too thin.

“Come back! It’s too dangerous!” camp counselor Randy Porter yelled at three teen-agers who were venturing toward the center of the lake, witnesses said.

Another boy also cried out to the group, according to a chronology prepared by officials at Camp O’Neal, where three victims resided and two others worked as counselors.

“This is dangerous. We should go back. We could kill ourselves,” the statement quoted the youngster as telling his friends.

“He also stated that the ice was cracking under their feet as he made these comments,” the statement said. “They (the victims) kept walking.”

Moments after the warnings, the three youngsters dropped through the ice, setting off a chain-reaction that ended with them and four would-be rescuers dead in the freezing lake waters. Porter, who issued the first warning, died as he struggled to rescue the children. Camp officials said it was his first day at work.

The camp’s statement was approved for release by the Mono County Sheriff’s Department, which is leading the investigation into the deaths. It came as sheriff’s deputies announced their own preliminary findings, which confirmed that adult counselors were with the youngsters on the ice shortly before their hiking party turned disastrous at noon Monday.

The level of supervision accorded the youngsters has been a central part of the investigation into the deaths.

The findings of the investigators--who include officers from the Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Forest Service--will be forwarded to the Mono County district attorney on Friday, Sheriff-Coroner Martin Strelneck said. He refused to comment on whether the teen-agers should have been allowed on the ice.

“I don’t think I want to comment on that because of the continuing investigation,” he said.

Meanwhile, rescue teams using a sophisticated underwater camera worked throughout the day Wednesday and spotted all six bodies that remained trapped in the lake. One victim had been recovered Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, members of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s diving team pulled up two bodies that had been resting on the sandy bottom 117 feet below the lake’s surface. Authorities identified them as two 15-year-olds, David C. Sellers of Tulare and Shawn Rayne Diaz of Dinuba.

Another two were brought to the surface Wednesday afternoon. They were identified as volunteer firefighter Vidar Anderson, 58, of nearby Sunnyslope, and counselor Porter, 36.

A fifth body was pulled out shortly before dark. The Mono County Sheriff’s Department said the victim was a juvenile. They would not officially identify him, but the third teen-ager who fell into the water Monday was Ryan McCandless, 13, of Redlands, whose parents said he had just arrived at Camp O’Neal on Friday.

Deputies said the sixth body had been sighted, but waters clouded over before the diving team could move in. That final body was presumed to be that of camp counselor Dave Meyers, 53, of Bishop. Tim Christensen, who runs a school on the camp’s grounds, described Meyers as an experienced back-country hiker who was familiar with conditions on the lake.

The recovery effort was halted as darkness fell and will resume at daylight today.

Sheriff’s deputies, who earlier had predicted that they would not find all the bodies, credited the underwater camera for their success Wednesday. Its originator, Mark St. James of Reno, volunteered the camera and his services. The cylindrical camera can broadcast pictures from any depth to rescuers on the surface and can stay submerged in the icy water for long periods.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Capt. Steve Batchelor, who supervised the diving team, called St. James “today’s hero.”

“I’m sure we would not have recovered all these bodies without him,” he said.

The victim recovered Tuesday was U.S. Forest Service employee Clay Cutter, 31, who ran to the lake to rescue others and was himself trapped. Cutter’s wife, Terry, held a tearful lakeside press conference Wednesday in which she recounted watching her husband struggling to save others before he went through the ice.

“I knew that Clay would not have had it another way,” she said, her voice breaking.

“God needed him early because he’s such a good man.”

The chronologies released by the Mono County sheriff-coroner and the camp Wednesday addressed a major question for the investigators, who have, among other things, been trying to determine whether the children were unsupervised or whether counselors were with them on the treacherous ice.

According to what investigators have been able to piece together so far, 16 teen-agers and two adults left the camp on a recreational outing Monday morning and ended up playing on the ice at Convict Lake. It was not immediately clear how deep the water was in the area where they initially played.

At some point, they broke into three separate groups, two of them accompanied by a counselor. The group without the counselor, Strelneck said, ventured farther out onto the lake than the others and was playing there when the ice beneath them shattered. Four of the five fell through, including the three who drowned and a fourth who made it back to shore. The unidentified teen-ager was hospitalized briefly.

Seeing the ice crack, the counselors rushed to help the boys and fell through in what was a shallower, though no less lethal, area. They and two rescue workers who arrived later all perished.

“(Counselor) Dave Meyers dropped his gear and went running in to save the boys,” the camp’s report said. “Randy (Porter) immediately told the kids to call 911 and then went in after the kids.”

Meyers, the camp statement said, was able to lift one of the boys from the water.

“(Meyers) went back in to the water to help the others,” the report said. “It is unclear if the child he got out fell back in or jumped in to help others.”

Authorities identified Sellers as the boy Meyers had pulled out of the water.

The camp, meanwhile, sought to counter any questions about the conduct of its employees. In addition to releasing the report, which repeatedly noted that the teen-agers had been warned off the ice, it also flew to Convict Lake the parents of one victim, Ryan McCandless. Speaking before their son’s body was recovered, Ryan’s father, Kerry McCandless, said he held the camp blameless.

“The kids made a choice to go out on the lake,” McCandless said. “It was wrong. . . . Accidents do happen.”

McCandless and his wife, Linda, spent the afternoon at the camp, where they talked to residents and were consoled by counselors. While they were there, groups of boys slept or lounged in a dayroom, receiving updates as the bodies were identified.

Sheriff-Coroner Strelneck, in comments to reporters Wednesday, characterized the investigation as a “borderline case” and said his plans to forward it to the district attorney did not imply that criminal charges would be filed. Strelneck said he decided to forward it to Dist. Atty. Stan Eller to ensure a thorough review.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dave Reider said the agency is reviewing its involvement in the tragedy, and said the probe could lead to a change in its policy of not posting signs warning of thin ice. But he said it would be impossible to police all of the state’s lakes well enough to keep people off the ice. The Forest Service has jurisdiction over Convict Lake.

“There are hundreds of lakes and we can’t post them all,” he said. Even so, Reider issued a warning: “California’s wild lands are inherently dangerous.”

On the icy lake surface, some rescuers spent the morning probing the hole into which the teen-agers disappeared, which is closer to the center than the one into which the adults fell.

On Tuesday, a diving team from Washoe, Nev., was probing in the shallower area where the adults were last seen and came upon Cutter’s body when they pulled on a rope that was floating below the ice. Cutter’s hand was still grasping the end of the rope, which he had taken with him when he raced from his home toward the lake.

But no other bodies were sighted, and authorities on Wednesday moved toward the deeper area where the children were last seen, using an air-propelled boat and the underwater camera. The camera spotted, in rapid succession, the remaining bodies.

Efforts to retrieve the bodies were delayed for hours by a broken starter on the rescue boat. When the effort resumed, members of the Los Angeles diving team slipped into the lake, replacing the Washoe County team. Unlike the Nevada team, whose equipment limits it to dives of about 80 feet, the Los Angeles team can dive to about 300 feet, officials said. The Los Angeles team also has two-way radio equipment that allows it to communicate with supervisors at the surface.

Seven divers from Los Angeles arrived at the lake early Wednesday.

“I’m sorry we can’t be here saving lives,” said sheriff’s Capt. Batchelor, a dive team supervisor.

Throughout the day, onlookers watched the rescue effort from the shoreline, among them the families of the victims.

Shannon Collins, the step-granddaughter of Vidar Anderson, the volunteer firefighter who lost his life trying to save other victims, came to the lake Wednesday against the wishes of her family. They felt it would be too traumatic, but she said she had to be there.

“Somebody had to be here for him,” she said. “I’m here because I loved him.”

Sappell reported from Convict Lake and Decker from Los Angeles. Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Kevin Roderick at Convict Lake.