As 4 More Victims Are Found, La Conchita Ponders Its Future

State and county officials cleared the way Wednesday for residents of the tiny town of La Conchita to eventually return home, even as the mud from Monday’s landslide gave up the bodies of four more victims -- a mother and her three daughters -- and geologists said the site remained dangerous.

At an early morning community meeting, officials told residents that they might be able to begin returning to their homes in a few days, and many said they intended to do so.

Officials warned, however, that the area remained prone to more slides like the one Monday that has now claimed 10 victims. Rescuers continued searching for three more feared dead, although the Sheriff’s Department said late Wednesday night that all the missing had been accounted for. .

“I anticipate more slides,” said Jim Otousa, a contractor geologist with the county public works department. “The earth is still moving, and it’s going to be a dangerous and uninhabitable area for some time. The situation is dynamic and changing as we speak.”

Despite those concerns, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger encouraged residents to rebuild as he toured the damage during a midmorning visit.

“In the last few days we have seen the power of nature to cause damage and despair,” Schwarzenegger told reporters and residents. “But we will match that power with our own resolve.

“The people that live here in this community are very strong,” he said. “It’s something I noticed right away. One of the first things they said is, you know, ‘We’ll be back.’

“I would say that I’m going to help them so they can come back here,” the governor added.

That pledge appeared to leave Ventura County officials nonplused. Kathy Long, head of the county Board of Supervisors, said after a meeting with Schwarzenegger that officials were unsure how they could make La Conchita safe.

“The devil is in the details,” she said. “If the governor can work with us on the technical analysis and develop proposals on how to make that happen, and provide funds to make that happen, we’d be more than willing to work with him.”

Since a mudslide in 1995 destroyed nine homes in the hamlet, county officials have warned that the area is unsafe but have also said they lack legal authority to order residents to leave.

Throughout Wednesday, the bad news swirled with the good, leaving many of the survivors in the community of 260 reeling.

Good news came during the community meeting at the Ventura County fairgrounds, when four residents who had been listed as missing turned up safe.

“Excuse me,” a young woman named Danielle Munroe said tentatively, raising her hand when her name was called out on a list of the missing. “I’m right here. Everyone in my house is all right.”

But though that announcement thrilled the crowd, it could not reduce the grimness of the scene that opened the day -- the sight, long before dawn, of Jimmie Wallet and rescue workers finally discovering four members of his family, dead in their home.

Wallet had been frantically searching for his wife and children since the hillside gave way Monday, destroying 15 homes and damaging 21 others. The construction worker and musician had gone out to buy ice cream just before the cliff that looms 600 feet above the community began to collapse.

The body of Wallet’s wife, Mechelle, 37, was found about 2 a.m. The bodies of three of his children -- Hannah, 10; Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2 -- were unearthed about two hours later.

The force of the mudslide was so great that mother and daughters appeared to have been swept out of, or through, their collapsing house, said Ventura County Fire Department Battalion Chief Scott Hall.

The children “were in very close proximity to a couch, so it looks like they had been on the couch” unaware of the danger when the wall of mud hit their home, Hall said.

Jimmie Wallet and other workers found the body of his wife, Hall said. Deeper down in the mud they found the three girls.

Wallet, along with friends and emergency workers, were all digging, passing buckets of mud down a line of helpers, when the bodies were discovered.

“He was always hopeful, and that’s why he wanted to participate in the rescue,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Department chaplain Ron Matthews.

Wallet identified the bodies as they were unearthed, Matthews said.

“I’m very pleased with the hard work and all the effort in finding my family,” Wallet said in a statement.

“He’s beyond devastated,” Keshara Parker, a friend, said later. “There’s no words to describe what he’s going through right now. This is a guy whose whole life has gone. His only thought was to find his babies and his wife. He wouldn’t leave until he found them.”

Wallet and his surviving daughter, Jasmine, 16, who was not home when the hillside gave way, went to stay with friends after the bodies were found, neighbors said.

The discovery of the four left three names on the official list of people at high risk of being buried in the mountain of mud. However, Sheriff’s Capt. Harold Humphries said late Wednesday that those three people had been found, although he had no details. The Fire Department, however, held to the list of three missing.

“We’re going to have to get together and figure out if that’s correct or if they have some names we don’t have on our list,” Humphries said.

Officials said they had a list of 20 people who might have been in La Conchita when the slide hit or had some connection with the town, and they asked the public for information anyone might have about them. The list is on the Sheriff Department’s website, www.vcsd.org.

Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper said rescue teams still held out hope that some of those buried in the mud and debris might be found alive. The rescue operation will continue at least through today, Roper said, adding that rescuers have started using ground-penetrating radar to search for bodies.

Searchers found at least three voids in the mud Wednesday that were large enough for a person to have been sheltered in, Hall said.

Searchers have been putting sensitive listening devices down into the voids in hopes of hearing sounds of life.

But Hall also said no such sounds had been heard since 6 a.m. Tuesday, and even that sound might not have come from a person.

About 10 a.m., the loud thrash of rotors broke the sound of digging at the disaster site as Schwarzenegger flew over in a dark green helicopter. The aircraft soon landed on the highway, blocking some relief workers’ access to the site for several hours.

Fifteen minutes after flying over the town, the governor walked toward the mudslide wearing a brown leather jacket with an American flag patch on the shoulder.

He stood atop the slide, surrounded by rescue workers and local elected officials, peered into a hole the workers were excavating and put his ear to a listening device.

As searchers continued to probe the rubble, residents debated whether to return.

Julio Varele, 53, said he and his wife, Annelle Beebe, would. Even though he lost a close friend, Tony Alvis, in the mudslide, Varele said he couldn’t fathom living any place else.

“We’ve had the most incredible time with our friends in the house. There’s the warmth, the atmosphere, with food and good times,” he said. “People love to come to visit. How can you put a price on that?”

After the 1995 slide, Varele said, he thought about the dangers “all the time.”

“It was sort of our choice to live there. It’s not that we’re dumb; it’s just that it’s a wonderful place,” he said.

Bill Matthews, 34, who lives about 200 feet away from the base of the slide, said he planned to stay “as long as the rent is [as high] as it is in Santa Barbara.”

Matthew Malone, who lives on the same street as Charles Womack, one of the victims, said it was too soon to ponder the question of returning.

“I don’t know if I can live across the street from where Charlie died,” he said. “The idea of it is nerve-racking right now. Will I? Probably not. I’m scared. Right now is not the time to make decisions on life.”

Another resident, Vera Long, recalled her brush with death. “I was in the house with my two kids, who are 4 and 2,” she said, “and if the mudslide had been closer by 20 more feet, there would have been nothing I could do.

“My children lived, and my neighbor’s children didn’t. I have to live with that, and I don’t know if I can go back there, knowing that,” she added.

But at the community meeting, Long also had pointed questions for officials.

“Who was in charge of deciding whether or not to evacuate?” she asked. “The questions are going to have to get answered.”

Officials had not ordered an evacuation of La Conchita on Monday, and residents say they received no warning although several mudslides had already closed U.S. Highway 101 near the community.

California Highway Patrol officials had used a bus to evacuate about 150 motorists stranded by those slides, but had not evacuated residents of La Conchita before the disaster.

Ventura County Fire Department Deputy Dave Festerling told the crowd he did not know why an evacuation had not been ordered.

Other county officials have said that monitors placed in the hillside above the town had not shown any indications of the coming slide. The monitors, installed after the 1995 slide, were in portions of the slope that did not collapse.

Some at the community meeting said residents had not evacuated on their own partly because of the highway closure.

“You couldn’t go north or south,” said Andrea Robertson of Mussel Shoals, another hamlet along that stretch of coast. “That’s why a lot of people were in La Conchita -- because they were stranded.”

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Times staff writers Carla Hall, Eric Malnic, Catherine Saillant, Wendy Thermos and Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this report.