Sudden death and lucky survivors

Storm's mud brings disaster in California

CALIFORNIA (CNN) -- Searches were resuming on Wednesday for more possible victims from the latest El Niño-driven storm to hit California. It's blamed for the deaths of at least eight people in the state, including two California Highway Patrol officers who were swept away in a river of mud as they went to a motorist's rescue.

The overnight storm from Monday into Tuesday was the strongest and apparently the last -- for a while -- in a series of storms that have punished California since late January, causing more than $475 million in damage and prompting 36 of 58 counties to declare states of emergency.

Stories of sudden death and lucky survivors:

• Rick Stovall and Britt Irvine never saw the end of the road. A rescue effort ended sadly early Tuesday when the bodies of the two California Highway Patrol officers were found lodged inside their patrol car, turned upside down in a rain-swollen river in Santa Maria, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

  Stovall, 40, and Irvine, 39, were rushing through swirling fog on Highway 166 to help a motorist in trouble when they dropped off the jagged asphalt and into the flooded Cuyama River.

  The storm had gouged 100 yards out of the two-lane rural highway and turned the Cuyama into a churning river of watery mud.

  Irvine, a native of Denver, Colorado, was a 15-year officer, and had worked out of the Santa Maria CHP office since 1990. He is survived by two stepsons and a stepdaughter.

  Stovall, a native of Crescent City, California, was an 18-year officer whose father is a retired CHP officer in Santa Maria. Stovall is survived by a wife, daughter and a son.

  "Their lives were lost doing what thousands of men and women of the CHP do every day -- trying to protect the safety of every Californian," Gov. Pete Wilson said.

• In the same river where Irvine and Stovall died, three other vehicles, including a jackknifed big rig, were stuck in the Cuyama River mud. Two drivers were rescued by helicopter and treated for hypothermia. Steve Miller, 47, was in good condition and James Rowan, 38, was in fair condition after surgery on a scalp injury.

  Rowan, clinging to the cab of his tractor-trailer, said he could only watch as Stovall and Irvine's highway patrol cruiser's flashing rooftop lights grew dim as the car sank and floated away.

  "I thought I was going to die," Miller said, as he told reporters about his car's plunge into the river.

  Emergency crews did not immediately find a third motorist in a submerged pickup.

• The storm set loose a massive mudslide in Laguna Beach early Tuesday, killing one man and injuring 10 other people. Mud oozed down the canyons of the seaside enclave south of Los Angeles, smashing through homes and sweeping away residents as they scrambled to stay above the hip-high torrent.

  "It was a washing machine as far as I knew, I was just rocking and rolling, and just desperately crawling my way to the top of wherever I was," Ann Quilter said.

  Quilter and others escaped with their lives as the wall of mud came thundering toward their Laguna Canyon Road homes early Tuesday. But as the sun rose, rescuers found the body of Glenn Flook, 25, in the mud.

• In Los Angeles, it took 40 firefighters and a helicopter to rescue a horse that became spooked and refused to move from a sandbar while being ridden across a swollen stream.

  The horse, placed in a sling and hoisted to safety, is reported to be doing fine.

• In San Diego, an underground drain that burst carved a sinkhole 70 feet deep, 50 feet wide and 600 feet long at an on-ramp for Interstate 15.

• In Northern California, waves chewed into a cliff beneath eight precariously perched homes in Pacifica, south of San Francisco.

• Residents remained barred from 500 homes around Clear Lake, north of Santa Rosa. The lake is at its highest level since 1909.

Correspondents Don Knapp, Anne McDermott and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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