>> reporter: marco farrow recording that wall of water, and you can hear it, panicked and panting as he scrambles to alert his family. >> wake dad up. we have a torrent of mud going through the house. >> reporter: 17 people killed. teams working through endless mud to find the missing. would you say it's possible someone could be alive sneer. >> -- here? >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: that's what robert riskin had hoped. her death has been confirmed. and now they turn to the grim task of salvaging keepsakes from a home full of mud and rocks and death. >> i hope that she knows that i was giving everything i could to >> reporter: santa barbara county officials only issued their emergency alert 20 minutes after the mudslides began. many did not heed the voluntary evacuation warnings. given the freak nature of the downpour, it might not have mattered anyway. >> they should have said anyone in the floodplain should get the hell out. >> reporter: what you're seeing behind me is basically ground zero. one of them came steam rolling through that, severing a gas main down below. that ignited those

this is by a man by the name of marco farrow. he was inside. he knows what's going on. he sees a van there. he yells at that van. tells him to go backwards and then right after that, seconds later, you see that wall of mud come down. then he goes back inside. he runs upstairs. he's trying to get his parents to wake up. all this happened, remember, at about 3:45 in the morning. there were orders to evacuate beforehand both mandatory and voluntary. in some of these areas. then when all this was happening, some people have told us that they received text alerts that said shelter in place. tragically, some people sheltered in place and boulders came through their homes. their homes were knocked off their foundations. and they perished. also, some people decided to flee. they went outside and they also perished. so it was just tragedy all around. absolute chaos when that wall of destruction just swept through. back to you, stephanie. >> devastation, all right, stay safe. we're going to continue to monitor that story. >>> coming up, the trump administration plans to destroy o

. >> reporter: marco farrow's cell phone video captures the moment the powerful mud and debris ran downhill. >> i basically ran for my life. i ran as fast as i could, made it back to my house within 30 seconds of the flash flood hitting. >> reporter: it hit within a matter of minutes leaving many with no time to escape. >> as you can imagine, most of the injuries we saw related to this event were related to fast moving debris as you can't even fathom what these poor patients went to to finally make their way into the emergency room department. >> reporter: and even whose homes that were not affected by the mudslide are still going to have problems for quite some time. for instance, the water infrastructure in this area has been seriously damaged. there's no time line to fix it. the busy 101 freeway, there's still debris all over the place and it won't reopen until next week. >> i can't even fathom as the doctor said. carter, thank you so much. >>> a wall of mud and debris slammed into the home of berkeley johnson tuesday. he talked to "cbs evening news" anchor jeff glor about what he saw th

>> reporter: marco farrow recording that wall of water, and you can hear it, panicked and panting as> get ready to go out. wake dad up. we have a torrent of mud going through the house. >> reporter: 17 people killed. and teams working through endless mud plains to find the missing. >> over here. >> would you say it's possible someone may still be alive here? >> sure. >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: that is what robert had hoped when he found him tuesday. with a bigger search party wednesday. searching for his mother, rebecca, her death confirmed and now they turn to the grim task of salvaging keepsakes from a home invaded by mud, rocks and death. the family accepting all the help it could get. >> i know at least i hope that she knows that i was giving everything i could to find her. >> reporter: santa barbara county officials only issued their emergency alert 20 minutes after the mudslides began. many did not heed the voluntary evacuation warnings. and given the freak nature of the downpour, it might not have mattered anyway. >> they screwed up big time. they should have said anyone in the