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| BREAKING NEWS: Investigation continues into crash as canal gives up yet another body |
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| Written by Layla Bohm | News-Sentinel Staff | |
| Thursday, 17 July 2008 | |
 Officers examine the body of Adriana Garcia, which was recovered from the canal near Bell Road Between Crows Landing and Newman. (Dan Evans/News-Sentinel) Sheriff's officers also defended what some said was a slow response to the incident, saying dive team members themselves could have been at risk in the fast-moving, murky waters where the victims were submerged. A teenage Lodi girl's body was found in the water mid-Wednesday, miles away from where her sister and three men died in the vehicle at the bottom of the Delta-Mendota canal. Autopsies were being conducted Wednesday, even as families waited word on one more victim's body, which was not found before nightfall. The water moves swiftly for miles, and the canal is filled with debris, meaning that law enforcement officers are simply waiting for the man's body to surface. Meanwhile, friends and relatives began trying to find ways to pay for the inevitable burial expenses. Children got involved, placing donation boxes in Lodi stores. The victims ranged in age from 16 to 45 and included a mother of three. The 12:22 p.m. crash apparently happened when Eulalia Garcia, 34, of Lodi, was driving a red Ford Explorer, said California Highway Patrol Officer Mayolo Banuelos. Garcia was heading north on a road next to the Delta-Mendota canal near Westley when she went through a stop sign and was struck by a westbound septic truck as it was about to cross the canal. Both vehicles crashed through the Needham Road guardrails, plunged into the deep waters and quickly sank. Rescue workers spent the next 10 hours trying to retrieve the vehicles. They had no visibility in the fast-moving water and had to work by touch rather than sight, officials said. By Tuesday evening, divers and a tow truck pulled the septic truck out of the water and recovered the truck driver's body. The driver was identified Wednesday by the Stanislaus County Coroner's Office as Luis Perez, 45, of Merced. More hours passed and then, at 10 p.m., crews hauled the mangled Ford from the water. Inside the vehicle, they found four bodies. Those victims, all of Lodi, were identified as Garcia, Isaac Tapia, 16, Adan Martinez, 22, and Elizar Cruz, 19. About 10 to 15 miles downstream, another body surfaced at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday and was identified as Adriana Garcia, 17. She was the younger sister of Eulalia Garcia. The anguished family members of another Lodi man, Lucas Martinez, 20, said he was also in the vehicle. They spent the day wondering when and where his body would surface. The Lodi victims had spent Tuesday morning picking peaches in an orchard. They were on their way back to Lodi, a drive of about 50 minutes, when the crash happened in a low-traffic area east of Interstate 5. The collision remained under investigation Wednesday, but CHP officials said at least both drivers, as well as the Ford's front passenger, were wearing seat belts. It was too early in the investigation to determine if any of the sport-utility vehicle's occupants had managed to get out, Banuelos said. Autopsies were being conducted Wednesday; causes of death were not yet available by early Wednesday evening. Dozens of family members had cried and lashed out Tuesday, asking officers why the vehicles remained in the water for so long. Stanislaus County Sheriff's spokesman Deputy Tom Letras sympathizes with the family members, and said that as a father he would have the same feelings. But he also said that the dive team would have handled the situation the same way even if the sheriff's daughter had been in the vehicle. The problem, he said, is that the water simply moves too fast and is laden with debris. "If we'd had cops jumping in the water, they would have drowned and then we'd have people asking, 'Why did you send cops into the canal just to recover a body?'" Letras said.  The dive team is on standby and does not work full-time, meaning that they had to travel from home, court, the jail or patrol, Letras said. Their equipment, including a large trailer, is stored at an airport hangar 40 minutes from the crash scene.By the time divers arrived, it was considered a recovery mission, not a rescue, Letras said. "Even if our dive team had been parked on that overpass and had witnessed that collision, it's very unlikely they would have been able to save anybody," Letras said. Once in the water, divers could see nothing and had to work by feel while fighting against the current. Even with lights, all they could see were their air gauges — and that was if they pressed the gauges against their goggles to see, Letras said. With at least two damaged vehicles in the water, along with various other debris, divers had to work slowly to avoid injury. They worked in shifts, replacing one another as air tanks ran out. At the time of the crash, water was moving down the canal at 3,800 cubic feet per second, said Frances Mizuno, assist executive director of the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority. That equates to more than seven gallons per second. The water comes from the Shasta and Folsom reservoirs and provides about 2 million acre feet of water a year agricultural farms on the entire west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Mizuno said. The CHP notified water officials of the crash, and they began adjusting gates, which can be controlled by remote from the Tracy office, Mizuno said. The gates are located every five miles along the waterway. When water is restricted, it pools between the gates and there is enough room for temporary restrictions, Mizuno said. The water resumed normal speed once officials got the vehicles out of the canal. Water officials contract with tow trucks to drag the canal, where stolen vehicles are sometimes dumped. Sometimes water employees or passersby notice tire tracks leading into the canal, so they call law enforcement, Mizuno said. Other times, nobody knows a vehicle has vanished into the water that averages about 20 feet deep.
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