SAN BERNARDINO - Searchers found seven bodies and poked through deep mud, jumbled trees and boulders Friday in hope of finding nine other people, mostly children, missing after mudslides roared through a church camp and a trailer camp in the fire-denuded San Bernardino Mountains.

Five bodies were recovered in Waterman Canyon below Saint Sophia Camp, which was smashed Thursday by a flow of mud, rocks and trees. Authorities did not immediately provide the ages or sex of the victims that were found. Nine of 14 people who had been missing there were children.

Two other bodies, a man and a woman, were found near each other about a half-mile from a KOA camp in Devore, about five miles to the west, where 32 house-trailers were destroyed, San Bernardino County authorities said. No one was missing there, said sheriff's Deputy Kris Phillips.

"I thought I was going to die," said Brian Delaney, 19, who described mud crashing into the KOA recreation center and trapping him up to his neck before rescuers pulled him out.

Twenty-seven people were believed to have been spending Christmas Day with the caretaker of Saint Sophia Camp, a Greek Orthodox facility, when a slide unleashed by heavy rain roared through. Fourteen were rescued.

"These folks had no warning," said county fire spokeswoman Tracey Martinez. "It just happened. According to the survivors we've spoken to they didn't even know it was coming until it was there."

County sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson cautioned that it was not certain that the bodies that were recovered in Waterman Canyon were all from the camp because vehicles were also found in the area. Identification was not going to be easy, he said.

"The victims have been caught in a terrible flash flood with boulders and trees, and all the debris that goes along with that. You can imagine that is not something that is easy to survive, although we are going to keep looking," he said, adding that the search was taking so long due to the size of the area.

"There was so much water, so much force. We're talking about a massive flash flood that has gone miles even," he said.

Two bodies found at the Devore KOA campground were identified by county authorities as Janice Arlene Stout-Bradley, 60, of San Bernardino and Carroll Eugene Nuss, 57. Residents said Stout-Bradley was the campground manager.

Temperatures fell rapidly at dusk and the National Weather Service issued a frost advisory for the region. Patterson said the search in Waterman Canyon would go on through the night.

"We have no reason to think we can't find survivors and I hope we will," Patterson said.

"I'm not aware of anything I could consider promising or signs of life," he said, adding, "We're not even close to giving up."

Searchers probed the mud with poles, in the same way an avalanche search is carried out.

"It's pretty tedious, but that's how we're doing it," Patterson said.

The slides were triggered by a Pacific storm that moved in late Wednesday and unleashed drenching rain Thursday over Southern California, where nearly 750,000 acres were burned bare by fires in October and November. Much of the scorched land was on the steep slopes of the San Bernardinos about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

The storm dropped 8.57 inches of rain on the west side of Cajon Pass, which runs between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges. In the Devore area, on the east side of the pass, rainfall totaled 4.39 inches, said Noel Isla, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Most structures at Saint Sophia Camp, built on a plateau at the upper end of the canyon, were unscathed. But two buildings on one side of the camp were swept away. A bench was left sticking out of the muck downstream, and a swing set lay on its side. Officials estimated the slide left mud 15 feet deep.

The camp is run by Greek Orthodox parishes, but there was no organized camp event on Christmas Day, said the Rev. John Bakas, dean of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Los Angeles.

Caretaker George Monzon, who lived there with his wife and two children, was among the missing, Bakas said.

"He lived on the site and his job was maintenance, keeping intruders out," said Bakas.

A 7-year-old girl and her mother were also missing, the girl's aunt said. The missing woman's husband, Gilberto Juarez, saved their 3-year-old daughter, Stephanie, and they were among those taken to a hospital on Thursday. But he could not reach his wife, Rosa, 40, and daughter Katrine.

"He said he helped the little girl up and when he turned they were gone, the water had risen too much and had swept the cabin away," said Juarez's sister-in-law, Mildred Najara. "They became separated when the water rushed in."

The leader of Greek Orthodox Christians in seven western states, Metropolitan Anthony of San Francisco, called for prayers and expressed hope for "positive results" from the search.

"As for those lives that we know are lost, we pray for their souls and for comfort for their families," he said in a statement.

At Devore, below the west end of the San Bernardino range, 52 people were rescued from a KOA campground for trailers. Three people were treated for injuries.

The KOA campground had a number of permanent residents. One of them, Delaney, said about 30 people had gathered in the recreation center because they were nervous about the heavy rain. After the power went out, rocks and other debris came crashing through the door.

Mud soon filled the center and Delaney and others broke the windows to escape.

"I tried to pull two ladies out," he said. "There were kids sitting on the pool table, and the pool table was almost up to the ceiling on the mud."

Once outside, Delaney got stuck in mud up to his neck and had to shed his clothing so rescuers could pull him out.

"I'm lucky to be alive," he said.

Residents fondly remembered Stout-Bradley, their campground manager.

"She was an angel," said Joe Plante, 62, recalling that Bradley organized a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the return of the trailer residents after the fall wildfires. "She got up and said the prayer and she was all happy we were back from the wildfires."

In Waterman Canyon, up to 5 feet of mud poured through windows into the first floor of Rick Williams' home, one of a string of about a dozen residences a quarter-mile below the church camp.

"It looked like running oil," said Williams, 40, who walked down from the mountain Friday morning after spending the night without power or phone service.

"Mud was coming through my dryer vent," Williams said. "It ripped the hot water heater off the wall."

Neighbor Dan Kiel, 56, also spent the night in his home and was flown out by helicopter because a heart problem prevented him from making the three-mile hike to the bottom.

"I've never seen anything like it before," Kiel said. "It was pretty scary. You could hear trees snapping."

Associated Press Writer Gillian Flaccus contributed to this report.