Seven bodies have been found and nine remain missing in two separate mudslides that struck the rugged canyon area east of Los Angeles on Christmas Day.
Five bodies were discovered in a mudslide in Old Waterman Canyon, about 65 miles (104 km) east of Los Angeles, and two more were found dead at a slide at a campground in nearby Devore.
The five Waterman Canyon bodies were believed to be family and friends of the caretaker at St. Sophia Camp, a retreat run by the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles.
The caretaker, identified by church officials as Jorge Manzon, was believed to be among the nine missing - some of them children as young as eight months old.
Father John Bakas, the dean of St. Sophia Cathedral in Los Angeles, said the camp had been closed for cleanup and repairs from wildfires that charred the area two months ago.
Bakas said church officials last heard from Manzon at about 2 p.m. on Thursday.
Authorities said the bodies of a man and woman were recovered on Friday from a campground in nearby Devore, where a wall of mud destroyed 32 trailers. Rescue teams led 52 others at the campground to safety on Thursday.
Search and rescue operations concluded late Friday at Devore, but were expected to continue throughout the night in Waterman Canyon, officials said.
Late Friday night, authorities began to concede that the odds of finding more survivors were diminishing.
"You can imagine that it's not something that's easy to survive," said Chip Patterson, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County sheriff's department. "It's even possible that we're not going to find every body."
Work crews brought in lights and generators to aid rescue teams who have had contend with mud and debris up to 12 feet (3.6 meters) deep in some places.
Firefighters used helicopters to evacuate two men who became trapped in canyon homes on a sludge-covered road but planned no other evacuations on Friday despite forecasts for more rain on Saturday.
Heavy rains falling on wildfire-charred mountainsides sent walls of mud crashing through the Waterman Canyon campground shortly after noon on Thursday, crushing buildings and snapping 40-foot (12 meter) trees like twigs. The Devore slide occurred hours later.
Fourteen adults and children were rescued on Thursday afternoon from the Waterman Canyon mudslide area and were treated at local hospitals.
Those still missing at the St. Sophia Camp may have been trapped in a cabin where they were eating Christmas lunch when it was hit by a wall of mud, a county fire spokeswoman said.
Thursday's torrential rainstorm dumped well over two inches (five cm) of rain on the greater Los Angeles area and more than three inches in the canyon area. The rains caused the collapse of hillsides denuded two months earlier by the worst wildfires in California history.
Those fires scorched more than 91,000 acres (36,830 hectares), killing four people and destroying 993 homes throughout the region