The recovery of the bodies has been slowed by the fact that most are 10 or 15 feet deep in a mass of mud and debris.
Beyond them is the immense Temple of Baal; the modern town is built inside it and its rows of columns rise out of a mass of mud roofs.
In the capital alone, more than 500 bodies were pulled from the mass of mud, collapsed buildings and mangled vehicles left by the storm.
Indeed the first sight incoming spectators get of one of the most beautiful courses in the world is a glutinous mass of mud that has formed in the valley between the 1st tee and the green.
The Hilton work, with its clifflike sweep of white, its touches of marine blue and its curved mass of mud brown, evokes the feeling of a beach, whether the artist means to or not.
Foremost among these is the ziggurat, a three-storied solid mass of mud brick faced with burnt bricks set in bitumen, rather like a stepped pyramid; on its summit was a small shrine, the bedchamber of the moon god Nanna (Sin), the patron deity and divine king of Ur.
On Friday morning, Edward Heinlein, 66, pointed to a mass of mud that overtook the upper part of his backyard in Azusa.
Property loss was estimated at $12.3 million, with 180 properties damaged, but thankfully no human lives were lost — although there were rescues of people in their cars attempting to escape the moving mass of mud.
Getting ready to leave his house on Ridge View Drive in Azusa about 7 a.m., Edward Heinlein, 66, pointed to a deep mass of mud that crept across his backyard at night.
Such deflector dam irrigation avoided the self-destructive weaknesses of large storage dams, in particular the danger of depositing great masses of refractory mud in the storage basin behind the dam.
