Crews to resume search for mudslide victims

LOGAN — Water started leaking into Jacqueline Leavey's house three weeks ago, almost as soon as she and her children moved into the place at 915 Canyon Road.

The landlord used a backhoe to dig a small trench around the retaining wall he built in the backyard two years ago, when the hillside had sloughed off some.

It worked until the landlord, Erik Ashcroft, was called back to the home Saturday morning and saw water building up in the home's basement, his parents said.

"He told them to get out," Ray Pehrson, Ashcroft's stepfather, told the Deseret News.

Then, he said, Ashcroft called 911 and the Logan Northern Irrigation Co.

But before Leavey and her children could get out, the hillside above their house collapsed on top of their home and buried them.

Monday, crews removed more than a dozen feet of mud and debris from on top of the home, as they continued to search for the bodies of Leavey, 43, and her two children, Victor Alanis, 14, and Abbey Alanis, 12, before calling off the search about 8:30 p.m. Crews planned to be back at the home today around 9 a.m. to continue the search.

At the start of Monday, more than 15 feet of mud covered the rental home. By noon, Logan public works director Mark Nielsen said crews had dug within two feet of the bedrooms, where officials believe the bodies could be located. Crews were unable to fully clear the bedrooms by the time the search was called off for the day. More than half the home remains covered by mud and silt from the Saturday slide.

A chain of searchers spent the rest of the day unburying the home with five-gallon buckets. Nielsen hoped to have the search resolved "by the end of the week."

Most family members have stayed out of the public eye, but Leavey's aunt, Emma Martin, examined the devastating scene Monday afternoon.

"Yes, we're nervous," was about all she had to say to reporters. The family would talk more after their loved ones were found, Martin said.

Leavey and her children lived with another couple who were related to them. That couple was not home at the time of the slide. The children's father, a truck driver, was out of the state Saturday but was back in Utah Monday.

The Cache County chapter of the American Red Cross provided the father and his sister with a counseling session Monday.