About 2,500 people are stranded in southern California after severe thunderstorms caused mountain mudslides yesterday evening, making many roads impassable.
In San Bernardino County, the mudslides came with such force that cars and campers were swept away. One fatality has been recorded in Mount Baldy; San Bernardino County Fire officials found the body of a man inside a car that had been washed into a flooded creek.
Meanwhile, 500 adults and children are stranded at a church camp in the town of Forest Falls in the San Bernardino National Forest. The camp, named Forest Home, has been posting regular weather updates on. Although they are temporarily trapped, all campers are said to be safe as they wait for teams of bulldozers to create a passage for them.
Forest Falls was reportedly inundated by a wall of mud and rock that was 15 feet high and 75 feet wide at its largest. “Our concern is that they’re isolated at that campground and no longer have access out of the mountain,” San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Kyle Hauducoeur .
Later, Hauducoeur laconically put : “We have a lot of mud to deal with.”