Horse Taken for Ride; Woman Gets Mud Bath

Monday night’s fierce storm unleashed boulders and tons of mud here, smashing bridges and forcing residents to scramble from their homes. And there was a horse, of course.

As ranch hands watched in horror, a yearling filly named Scarlet plunged into the raging Silverado Creek at the west end of Modjeska Canyon about 8 p.m. when the ground collapsed beneath her. The horse survived somehow as she was swept nearly a mile downstream and under a highway before landing on an island.

“Nicks and scratches, that’s all. She’s one tough filly,” said Mike Erickson, owner of Step-N-Style ranch.

Veterinarians flown in by Marine helicopter reached the horse at noon Tuesday, fed her and gave her a mild tranquilizer. But rescue had to wait until the flood waters receded.

At the other end of this picturesque canyon, Al Paredes, wife Lori Prescott and a crew of neighbors gathered Tuesday to mop up. Prescott said she was nearly killed Monday night when an avalanche of mud trapped her between her hot tub and the back wall of her home as she and neighbors worked to clear rocks from a drainage channel.

“If I was there a couple more seconds, it would have buried me,” Prescott said. “The mud went from my waist to my shoulders in seconds. I couldn’t get out. A fireman was trying to get to me, and it was like he was swimming upstream. It was just coming so fast.”

Prescott, who was wearing her husband’s oversize rain boots, managed to wrench her right foot free and swim with the flow of mud. Neighbor Steve Enoch reached out and grabbed her as she went by.

Her father, Dave Prescott, whose glasses were fogged by rain, saw Enoch dragging what he thought was the family dog.

“I said, ‘Oh, good, you saved the dog,’ ” he said. “A neighbor shouted, ‘That’s not a dog, that’s your daughter.’ ”

After three hours of moving boulders to divert the flow, authorities ordered the family to evacuate. They spent the night at a Tustin hotel.

Dave Prescott said he couldn’t sleep. “It just kept coming over me in waves, thinking about my daughter. What a horrible way to die.”

As sunshine filled the canyon Tuesday morning, friends and neighbors began the cleanup: sandbagging each other’s houses, shoring up berms and shoveling away the sticky mud. As they worked through the day, they recalled their frantic efforts of the night before.

As pouring rains lashed the canyon, the air-raid siren on top of the firehouse here sounded again and again as hillsides began to slide.

“This was Harding Creek here last night, not Harding Road,” Art Linich said.

Neighbor Mike Hawley added, “There were boulders going by bigger than basketballs.”

The reason, it turned out, was that a private bridge had partially collapsed, sending the creek waters roaring down the road.

Joan Rosco said she and others were in the community center at the intersection of the two roads when “a solid wave of water hit. . . . We all turned around and looked. When we opened the door it was unbelievable how much water came in, but it was the only way out, so we got out.”

Modjeska Fire Capt. Bruce Newell worked through the night, made a quick trip home at 6:30 a.m. to let his wife, Beth, know he was OK, then left to drive a group of children to high ground where a school bus could reach them.

Other emergency crew leaders worked through the morning, while many residents stayed home to clean up flooded basements, garages and driveways, and to snap pictures while the creek was still a raging torrent.

“Jesus Christ! Holy cow!” cried Bruce Day, a longtime canyon resident, as he walked 30 yards downstream from his home and discovered that one side of the road had been chewed away by Santiago Creek.

“Oh, mercy,” said his wife, Caroline. “It was like a freight train last night and the night before, the boulders were coming down so hard.”

But she expressed the dogged optimism that characterizes residents of this close-knit canyon community: “We’ve been through it all out here, and we just keep plugging along.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, volunteers gathered at the Prescott-Paredes house, where a muddy brown stream still ran through the guest bedroom and the garage.

“We’re going to get a whole bunch of neighbors and friends in here and clean up. We’re going to rescue the Paredeses,” Garnet Ambrose said.

Al Paredes was matter-of-fact despite the mess. “It’s just a house,” he said. “We’ll move the rocks, and we’ll be fine.”