LOGAN — The bodies of a mother and her two children buried in a massive mudslide were found Tuesday.
About 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Logan Mayor Randy Watts announced that the bodies of Jacqueline Leavey, the mother, and her daughter, Abbey Alanis, had been recovered. About 7 p.m., workers recovered the body of Victor Alanis, Leavey's son, police said.
"My mixed emotions are the result of gratitude that our workers were able to bring partial closure for the family, but that gratitude is certainly tempered by the pain we all feel for this family's loss," said Watts, who lived for 25 years in the Island area, just a few homes away from the slide area.
No other details about the recovery were made available Tuesday. Watts did not take any questions from the media.
Leavey's family also declined to make any statements Tuesday, Watts said.
Search crews were concentrating earlier in the day on the western portion of the house at 915 E. Canyon Road, just south of Utah State University.
The house, which did not have a basement, was buried in 15 feet to 25 feet of mud. Leavey, her 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son were believed to be inside the house at the time. Crews had been working since Saturday to recover the bodies in the slide near the Logan and Northern Canal.
Also Tuesday, 911 calls from Saturday's disaster were released to the media through Government Records Access and Management Act requests.
"I think someone is injured because the house went down the hill," one caller told emergency dispatchers. "Yeah, someone's in there."
The first 911 call was believed to be made by Leavey's landlord, Erik Ashcroft.
"The whole hill is starting to slough off, and there's water running out of the hillside here," said the 911 caller believed to be Ashcroft.
Another caller can be heard growing more urgent as the water flow begins to increase.
"It's starting to flood. … The water is coming down," the caller told 911 dispatchers.
Even as the first emergency responders arrived on scene and began looking for possible survivors, they knew right away the mountain still made the situation dangerous.
"The only thing we want to hear is 'evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,' then sound the horn," a firefighter told another emergency response commander on the two-way radio when talking about setting up lookout points. "We have continual slough going on above it. … I just saw probably half a dump truck load slide down."
The evacuation call was made at least three times over the two-way radio. Prior to one evacuation order, a firefighter exclaimed, "The tree is coming down."
"A big chunk is coming down, big chunk, big chunk, big chunk" could be heard on another occasion before the order to "evacuate, evacuate, evacuate."
Firefighters temporarily called off the search because of the dangerous slide situation after the initial emergency calls.
Now four days later, the damage is nearly too difficult to imagine without actually seeing it.
"This is no longer a house with some dirt in it. This is a mountain of dirt with pieces of house in it," said Logan Fire Chief Mark Meaker.
Before the bodies were found, city officials took reporters to the dig area Tuesday morning to give them an idea of the scope of the operation and to answer questions about why the search was taking so long.
All that could be seen were piles of mud and dirt with some pieces of wood that appeared to be part of the house.
"It has the same force as a 747 crashing into the mountain," Logan Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Peterson said of the mud slamming into the house.
Searchers concentrated first on the back part of the house where the bedrooms were, because that is where family members said they spent most of their time.
"We are profoundly grateful," family spokesman Rolando Murillo said of all the rescue efforts and donations. His statement was made prior to the discovery of the bodies. "We ask God's blessings on all the rescue workers."
In a brief prepared statement read in both English and Spanish, Murillo said the family was making it through the tough times because of their faith in God. A trust fund has been set up for the family at all Wells Fargo banks. The account was opened by Rosa Rivera in memory of the Leavey-Alanis family.
As the recovery effort continued, so did the number of questions being raised as to who, if anyone, was to blame for the slide. Should residents have received more warning about the potential for a dangerous event?
In 2005, students of USU professor and geologist Robert Pack started a study of the hillside following another dangerous mudslide. That study, which found the hill was prone to yet another slide, focused on the hazards upslope from the canal and not the canal itself, Pack said.
What those conducting the study didn't anticipate, however, was movement below the canal, which is what geologists believed happened Saturday that triggered the chain of events.
"This event is different than anything that has happened in the past 100 years," Pack said. "The smoking gun is water. The jury is still out where the water came from."
The slide caused dirt to drop from under the canal, initiating the catastrophic mudslide that crashed into the homes below.
"The description of it exploding isn't too far from the truth," Pack said.
Logan received a copy of Pack's report late last year, Logan public works director Mark Nielsen said. The process of identifying homes at risk and what needed to be done about it had not yet begun, he said.
"(Residents) should have been warned by someone," Nielsen conceded Tuesday. But as to whose responsibility it was to do that, he said, was still under investigation.
Also Tuesday, Logan officials made a plea to residents to conserve water to help agricultural users affected by the destruction of the canal. Homeowners were encouraged to "deep soak" their lawns after 8 p.m. and before 8 a.m.
e-mail: preavy@desnews.com