Inner Balance - Three People Presumed Dead In B - The Globe And Mail - Landslide

A rescue mission in southeastern British Columbia turned into a grim recovery operation on Sunday as excavation crews unearthed the body of one of four people missing in a massive landslide.

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The news of the grim discovery came with weather deteriorating in southeast B.C. where a late melting, record snow pack and weeks of heavy rains have saturated soil. The situation was underscored by a weekend mudslide that closed Highway 93 near Fairmont Hot Springs. The latest slide triggered the rescue of at least one person, but there were no reported injuries.

For Richard Ortega, who made a dramatic solo attempt to find survivors the day after the Johnsons Landing slide, the search results Sunday were not a surprise.

Mr. Ortega said he could sense earlier in the day that the search operation had shifted from rescue to recovery and he had been expecting the worst.

Mr. Ortega became involved in the search effort at just after 4 a.m. Friday, after a frantic plea for help from the mother of the two missing young women.

Lynn Migdal, whose two daughters and former husband were missing in the landslide, which swept past the edge of Mr. Ortega s property, was calling from Florida, sure that somehow she had heard one of her girls calling out.

Whoa hang on a second here, says Mr. Ortega, his inner balance shaken by the recollection of that dramatic phone call.

I know her to be slightly psychic. She said she felt one of her daughters might still be alive in the building and she didn t want to wait for the officials to get their act together, he said.

Mr. Ortega, with his wife, Angele, runs Johnson s Landing Retreat Center in the picturesque settlement on Kootenay Lake. The retreat focuses on self-awareness, and Ms. Migdal has stayed there in the past.

She said, Can you please go down and see if you can find anything, he said, in an interview Sunday morning, as about 70 rescue workers were conducting a grid search around the home shared by Mr. Webber, 60, and his daughters. The search was also probing for a missing neighbour, Petra Frehse, 64, a German tourist who spent her summers in the community.

After the slide roared down a creek bed on Thursday morning, search and rescue crews had assembled, but had been cautious because of concerns another landslide might come down at any moment. They did not reach the Webber home until Friday evening.

At dawn on Friday, however, not sure when the official search would begin, Mr. Ortega set out alone.

I just knew what I had to do, he said.

It was cool and barely light when he got in his truck and drove a short distance to the once woody vale where Mr. Webber and Ms. Frehse had their homes.

The road ended in a wall of mud with broken trees sticking out in haphazard directions, Mr. Ortega said. There was a deafening silence. It was too early for the birds to be singing. You could hear the creek running in the distance.

Officials believe an avalanche went into the creek, created a dam, which later burst, unleashing a torrent of mud, boulders and broken trees.

Looking out over the rubble field, Mr. Ortega saw the twisted roof of the Webber s home, but otherwise he wouldn t have recognized what, the day before, had been such a tranquil setting his wife called it a fairy dell.

The landscape had changed to a scene of destruction, he said.

Mr. Ortega set out across the debris field, at times jumping from one shattered tree trunk to the next.

When he got to the roof of the house he scrambled around the building, knocking and calling out. Then he slipped through a gap where a wall had split open.

I was in a blue-coloured room. There were nautical charts. I think it was Val s room because he was a seaman, said Mr. Ortega.

He crawled in to the building as far as he could.

I tapped. Listened for breathing or crying or anything, any kinds of signs of life. There was absolutely nothing just household items scattered here and there. And silence, he said.

Feeling a kind of hopelessness Mr. Ortega retreated after about 30 minutes and went to call Ms. Migdal.

I told her I didn t find anything, he said sadly. The mother of two young girls. You can imagine how she felt.

With a report from Canadian Press