Body-Recovery Work at Creek a Grim Task

The rain was over, and the sun was shining. But the muddy horror continued Sunday on the banks of Arroyo Pasajero Creek.

Farm workers battled the mud for the right to bury their dead loved ones and friends trapped in cars that had tumbled into the thunderous darkness when the Interstate 5 bridge collapsed.

As the turbulent waters subsided Sunday morning, about 350 anxious people stood along the almond orchards above the muddy Arroyo Pasajero in a grim vigil.

They watched as volunteers with shovels, sandbags and tractors struggled against the mud to retrieve the bodies of seven Fresno County residents who presumably perished Friday night when the normally tranquil creek broke the freeway bridge supports. The wails of mourners pierced the double din of machinery and a California Highway Patrol helicopter.

“It’s a tragedy; it’s not supposed to happen on an interstate freeway. This is supposed to be the safest road you can travel,” said Ramon R. Dominguez, mayor of Huron, a farming town of about 5,000 residents approximately 50 miles southwest of Fresno. The raging creek waters had pounded the giant freeway columns until at least five gave way and the four lanes disappeared.

Among the victims were two young women, lifelong best friends and college roommates, who were making their weekly trek home from junior college to visit their families and to work part time at two local restaurants.

The two 18-year-olds had just left work Friday night when their red Cougar dropped off the stub end of the bridge and into the whirling waters.

One of three brothers of one young woman joined the search when the work did not seem to be going fast enough. His sister’s body was found Sunday about dawn. Her friend was still missing.

A second car, a red Firebird, upside down in the water with four related people still inside, had evidently been on its way to a family reunion in Huron.

“They had no idea, no warning. The road just fell into the water,” said Rodrigo DeAnda, who stood watch for six hours Sunday near the overturned car that was driven by his brother, Jesus, a farm worker.

The Firebird, its undercarriage and tires visible, was thought to contain the bodies of Jesus’ wife, his mother-in-law and his 9-year-old sister-in-law. A foot, still clad in a shoe, poked up through the receding mud.

Veronica Lopez, too, waited by the creek’s edge Sunday.

Two days before, she had felt the bridge shake when she first crossed it to pick up the four family members, but she did not think much about it, she said.

About 45 minutes later, at 8:30 p.m. Friday, she was in the second car and her two sisters, her brother-in-law and her mother were ahead of her, crossing back over the freeway span.

“They just dropped off the earth,” Lopez said.

She braked and leaped out, trying to warn other cars by waving a flashlight and yelling. But she saw three more vehicles plunge into the gaping 100-foot break. “They just went in. No one listened to me,” she said.

As the workers got closer to the bodies, DeAnda moved a bit away, clambering farther up the bank in his work clothes--high irrigation boots, jeans, work shirt, baseball cap. “I prefer to be here now,” said the farm foreman.

Fresno County search and rescue crews, state Forestry Department tractors, machinery from local farms and a host of other volunteers with shovels struggled around the Firebird.

A gasoline-powered pump sucked out water and silt from the car as a huge winch tugged it upward. At last, as it was beginning to grow dark, workers lifted a yellow canvas tarp to shield the sight of the first body being freed. It took another hour to release the other three.

Jesus DeAnda, 27, and his wife, Martha Patricia, 25, had two children, ages 5 and 3, Rodrigo DeAnda explained. “They will be my children now,” he said. Jesus DeAnda was driving his wife, her mother, Francisca Martinez, 52, and her baby sister, Cynthia Martinez, 9, in the two-car family convoy when he found local side roads flooded and looped back onto the freeway toward neighboring Coalinga, to reach the reunion in Huron.

Authorities are not certain how many vehicles plunged into the creek Friday night because the waterway contains hulks of some cars that may have been dumped there well before the rainstorm. The presumption is that seven people perished but it could be days, if ever, before a full count is known.

Linda Muniz’s three brothers worked alongside volunteers through the night, digging around her overturned red Cougar, finally freeing the body of the college student early Sunday morning.

“They dug and they dug, until they found her,” said her cousin Martha Pena.

Missing from the car was Linda Muniz’s passenger, best friend and college roommate, Martha Zavala, who shared a ride home every Friday night from Fresno City College to visit their families in Huron and to work in restaurants--Muniz at the Red Robin, Zavala at McDonald’s.

Relatives continued the search Sunday afternoon for Zavala, poking with sticks through the silty soil and trees at the creek’s edge. Some hoped that she might have survived, trapped somewhere with enough air to breathe.

“We are just praying maybe for a miracle, for something,” said cousin Melissa Gonzalez.

Friends and relatives said the two young women, who graduated from Coalinga High School last spring, knew that bridge well. After their senior prom, they even cruised the freeway for want of anything better to do in the rural area not known for a scintillating social life.

“We got home at 3 in the morning,” classmate Juanita Cardenas remembered of that prom night.

Mayor Dominguez raised the possibility that Zavala’s body might be extremely difficult to find under the tons of mud churned by the storm waters.

“If she is buried somewhere, we may never find her,” he said. “A car you can detect with a metal detector, but not a body.”

CHP spokesman Al Galvez said helicopters are looking for a brown sedan reportedly driven by the cook from a nearby restaurant.

‘We’ve flown up and down this creek, and we haven’t been able to spot a brown sedan,” he said Sunday night.

A fourth vehicle, a pickup, hurtled off the road Friday night but the driver was able to pull himself out of the truck and into a tree, where rescuers found him.

Arax reported from Coalinga and Gordon reported from Los Angeles.

* MALIBU RESPITE: Storm-battered city mops up on a sunny Sunday. B1