California Mudslides: Woman Survives Being Buried Alive In Bay Area

A California woman survived being buried alive after a mudslide barreled through her house, trapping her under the debris after it collapsed and rolled down a hill.

Susan Gordon, 76, of Sausalito, California, was asleep in a room on the second floor of her home early Thursday morning when a mudslide spurred by a fierce thunderstorm tore through her duplex.

Gordon was awoken moments before the ensuing tumult by her cat, she told KPIX, a San Francisco CBS affiliate.

"I was sort of tossing because my cat usually wakes me up about that time or jumps in bed with me and then all of a sudden there was this cracking sound," she said. "And then I was tumbling down and things were tumbling all over me, on top of me and it didn’t last very long at least while it was happening."

Gordon, along with the remnants of her collapsed house, then rolled down a hill.

"I had trees on top of me," she continued. "I had beams on top of me and I and I thought I gotta get out of here and I couldn’t move anything off because it was too heavy."

Gordon was trapped for two hours under the wreckage before first responders were able to locate and retrieve her.

The home, which Gordon had rented and lived in for a decade, has been severely damaged and rescuers have been unable to locate her cat, who they think died during the mudslide.

Gordon's son, Brooks, has set up a GoFundMe page in attempts to help his mother get back on her feet and recoup even a fraction of what she has lost. He has raised $42,365 with a total fundraising goal of $100,000.

Brooks is optimistic about his mother's recovery.

"Mentally, she just needs to recuperate," he told the San Jose Mercury News. "Physically, she’s the same person that she was, with just a couple scrapes."

According to the California Department of Health, approximately 25 to 50 people die every year as a result of injuries sustained in mudslides and landslides in the United States.

The U.S. Geological Survey also reported that at least 20 were killed in California's Santa Barbara County in 2018 as a result of heavy rains in an area with steep hillsides that had been previously been affected by wildfires.