Several missing after California mudslide

LOS ANGELES -- Scattered rain showers lashed waterlogged Southern California again Tuesday, hampering efforts to find survivors buried by a mudslide in a coastal community and prompting hundreds to flee a mountain town below a rain-swollen reservoir and along rising streams.\nThe succession of storms that have brought heavy snow to the mountains of Northern California and astonishing amounts of rain in the south were blamed for the deaths of at least 19 people.\nThe National Weather Service said Tuesday that downtown Los Angeles had recorded its wettest 15 consecutive days on record, with a total of 17 inches of rain falling in the period ending Monday.\nThe storm was forecast to taper off late Tuesday or early Wednesday, and no new system is expected through the coming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. More snow fell in the Sierra Nevada, but the mountains were expected to get a break in the weather this weekend with rising temperatures.\nIn La Conchita, Calif., a small community on a spit of land between the hills south of Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean, a massive mudslide Monday killed four people, injured 14 and left up to 27 unaccounted for.\nSome of the missing might have been out of town, but firefighters were certain at least some were trapped in the 15 homes that were crushed under a pile of mud 30 feet high, said Keith Mashburn, the Ventura County Fire Department's chief investigator.\nRescuers using hand tools resumed their search before daybreak Tuesday when they detected what appeared to be slight movement in the mud and debris. Fire officials advised them to "look for small hands and small fingers" because three children were among the missing, said department spokesman Joe Luna.\nJoining the search was Jimmie Wallet, who said he had left his wife and three daughters to buy ice cream and was leaving the store when he saw the river of earth curve toward his block. He ran toward his home, but it was buried.\nWallet, 37, told The Associated Press he worked alongside firefighters to rescue two people from the debris Monday and saw one of his neighbors pulled out dead.\nEarly Tuesday, Wallet's face and clothes were caked with mud, but he said he had not given up hope of finding his family.\n"I know they've got to be there. I'm not going to stop," he said.\nHowever, he said, there were no longer screams coming from beneath the debris as there had been Monday.\nAbout 20 miles away, about 350 people in Piru, Calif., took shelter overnight at a school after the entire town of 2,000 residents was advised to evacuate.\n"Lake Piru is filling faster than it's releasing water," said Rod Megli, division chief for the Ventura County Fire Department. "That volume of water could affect a number of residents. We'd rather be safe than sorry."\nSome Piru residents refused to leave, however.\n"God is with me, and I'm not afraid of anything," said Moses Hernandez, refusing to abandon his Elva's Center Market even though others waiting out the storm had cleaned out most of his supplies. "I'm out of everything -- eggs, milk, potato chips."\nSoutheast of Los Angeles, Orange County sheriff's personnel evacuated hundreds of people Tuesday along a three-mile stretch of swelling San Juan Creek in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.\nThe storm also forced the evacuation of an apartment complex in Alhambra, a suburb on the edge of Los Angeles, where authorities feared a rain-saturated hill might give way. A man was trapped Tuesday in a cave in San Bernardino County, but it was not immediately known how long he had been in the cave.