A town’s Christmas plans washed out

Her home was sitting in several feet of soupy muck, her prized garden with roses, myrtles and begonias remained buried in the mud and her daughter’s cat, Boots, was still missing after two days.

But on Christmas Eve, Monica Mortan still found something to smile about at her red-tagged home in flood-ravaged Highland in San Bernardino County.

“Hey, my fairy’s still up!” Mortan, 59, exclaimed as she crouched and peered through a window, spotting the charm still intact and hanging from a ceiling light.

Then Mortan leaned on a fireman’s shoulder and began sniffling, tears streaming down her face.

“What are we going to do? We have no place to go,” she said.

“Mom, we’ve been through a lot, we can get through this too,” said her daughter, 31-year-old Danielle Morris. “We can replace the cars. We can’t replace us.”

Residents in this modest stretch of east Highland with its rows of single-story wooden clapboard houses surveyed the damage Friday, two days after roaring floodwaters swept through the area and left many homes inundated with several feet of mud. Families from roughly 30 evacuated homes were allowed to return for two hours Friday to retrieve some of their belongings.

Evacuation orders remained in place for an additional 35 homes at the base of some 100-foot bluffs. A county geologist was concerned because a mud retention wall holding back the hillside was filled to capacity.

“Everybody’s working as hard as we can,” said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Bill Peters, adding that 26 crews of 14 firefighters were working on the cleanup effort. Crews were using shovels to dig out cars stuck in the mud in order to clear the roads for heavy machinery.

Officials were hoping to get residents back in their homes by Monday, Peters said.

Neighbors said the flood was a disaster waiting to happen ever since sprawling orange groves along the foothills were turned into housing developments and strip malls in the mid-1980s. A channel carrying water down the hills, once open and well-maintained, was encased in concrete and rerouted away from the natural flow of the river, they said.

“We told them for years, it’s not going to work,” Morris said. “They said, ‘It’s OK, we have engineering degrees.’ ”

Early Wednesday, their fears came true when the channel clogged up with mud washed down from the hillside and quickly turned the flowing water into a raging river. Steel plates covering the channel exploded from the force of the current, sending gushes of water spouting into the air, residents said. Many narrowly avoided harm, escaping through windows and wading through the floodwaters. An 87-year-old woman was carried out on a stretcher through the back window of her home by emergency crews.

Families in the close-knit neighborhood, where many have lived generation after generation, some since the 1800s, were comforting one another and lending a helping hand, passing out bottles of water and showing up with shovels to help others.

Across the street from the Mortans, Elsie Juarez, 78, fondly recounted working at the nearby orange packaging houses as a girl, and fishing out of the channel the oranges that washed down from the groves.

Her grandson, 39-year-old Louie Varrera, who now lives in the home where she grew up, was covered in sweat shoveling out mud around the house and creating trenches so water could flow out. Behind his home, his beloved Camaro, motorcycle and a boat were buried in the mud.

Two nights ago, Varrera showed up at her home covered in mud and devastated about what had happened to his home, Juarez said.

“My house, Grandma, my house,” Juarez recalled him saying. “I told him, ‘You’re OK, that’s what matters.”

Juarez said she wasn’t going to let the flood ruin the family’s Christmas festivities — she’s already prepared 20 pounds of tamales and put them in the freezer. On Thursday, Louie was able to retrieve his presents, which he had salvaged by throwing them on the bed, she said.

Marie Mujica, who was helping her parents retrieve what they could from a yellow house down the street, said she believed the neighborhood would pull through.

“We all grew up together, friends, family, for generations,” she said. “It’s going to take us a while, but no one’s leaving. Everyone’s going to rebuild, and we’ll put this behind us and move on.”

At the Mortan home, family, friends and fire crews navigated through the mud, salvaging family photos, clothes and soggy Christmas presents. Amber, the younger of Mortan’s two daughters, retrieved from her bedroom her late father’s yellow hard hat from his fire captain days, and squeezed out muddy water from a small Dalmatian doll — her father’s gift to her on her 7th birthday.

“It’s not worth a lot, but it’s ours,” Mortan said, scanning the mud-covered belongings piled in her yard.

Just then, a firefighter emerged from a back room with another surprise — the family’s cat, Boots, was found safe and sound, snuggled between blankets.

Once more, Mortan’s face broke out in a big smile.

victoria.kim@latimes.com