Three presumed dead after Logan canal breaks, flooding homes

LOGAN — Search crews say the effort to find a mother and her two children believed to be buried in a powerful mudslide that ripped their home off its foundation, was declared a recovery operation late Saturday night.

"There's not any reasonable chance of anyone surviving in what's left there," Logan Fire Chief Mark Meaker said. "We don't believe there's savable lives."

Asked whether there was any chance the victims were not in the house but rather had gone somewhere and not notified anyone, Meaker said he was 99 percent sure the trio was inside when the mudslide hit. As much as he said he would like to believe the family will show up somewhere else, "It's just not going to happen. We really don't believe it is," he said.

Because the hill where the slide occurred was still extremely unstable, the effort to recover the victim's bodies was not expected to resume for three or four days.

"Everything that could be done, was done," Meaker said.

Family members of the victims, who had been waiting nearby all day for news of their loved ones, were given the news just prior to a late night news conference.

Before the search was called off, Julio Jacome watched and worried: His relatives had been renters in the house for the past month.

Jacome's son lives in the home, but was out of town when the flood occurred. The son's sister-in-law, who was only identified by her first name, Jackie, 39, had moved into the home a month ago with her two children, a son, 13, and a daughter, 12.

"There's a lot of emotion inside me," Jacome said, using Nurian Cuellar as a translator. He is originally from El Salvador, but has lived in Cache Valley 20 years. "We just pray and ask God to help them."

The names of the victims were not released Saturday night.

Meaker said more than 100 search and rescue personnel, including the Unified Fire Authority's highly experienced Urban Search and Rescue team worked tirelessly throughout the day. Ordering the searchers to stop was not an easy decision.

"We had to drag them away to make them stop. They didn't want to stop searching," said Logan Police Chief Russ Roper.

A third of the damaged house was covered by debris. Crews methodically went through that portion throughout the day and into Saturday night, removing the debris by hand. They also used cameras and listening devices, and dug small holes to drop those instruments into the ground to look for survivors.

Once that section was cleared, the search was called off. The final two-thirds of the house was buried in mud.