Diane Hart had prepared for a natural disaster the day the La Conchita landslide slammed into her small rental house.

Only it wasn't the one that came close to killing her.

Her son, Eric Hart, called her shortly after 6 a.m. about a tornado warning and urged his mother to find a safe place.

She realized she couldn't use the bathroom because of its mirrored doors, she recalled from her hospital bed at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. She found a coat closet, cleared it out and threw in several big pillows and a blanket for extra padding. The 56-year-old grandmother of three tucked herself inside and waited, but no tornado hit. She left her sanctuary.

Shortly after noon, Hart walked to the west side of La Conchita to look at an earlier landslide that had closed Highway 101. She headed back home to make herself a hamburger and do some work from home for her job as a manager of patient services at Mentor Corp.

About 12:30 p.m., her year-old cat Casper began pestering her relentlessly. "He was crying and pawing at me like he was trying to tell me something," she remembered. "I should have listened to him."

About a half-hour later, she stood up to stretch and from her front window saw people frantically running down her street.

She ran for the closet. Within seconds the house caved in.

She got near the doorway when a pile of rubble pinned her in the closet. When the earth stopped moving, Hart said, "I thought, 'Oh, my God, I'm buried alive. This is like my worst nightmare. I'm not going to survive this.' "

Her training as a registered nurse gave her an inkling that she was badly hurt. She had 12 broken ribs, three fractured vertebrae, two broken arms and a fractured right scapula.

"I couldn't move anything. I pushed a little bit to see if anything would give, but nothing did," said Hart.

Hart knew she had to conserve her energy and would cry out only when she heard people. At one point, shortly after the mudslide hit, she heard someone yelling below her. The person cried out, "Can anybody here me? I'm down here."

"I yelled back, 'Yes I can hear you.' " She didn't get a response, and the cries stopped soon after.

An ex-boyfriend and neighbor, Brett Johnston, heard about the massive mudslide while in Santa Barbara. He knew Hart was probably working from home but called her office at Mentor Corp. to double check. When he learned she wasn't there, he headed back to La Conchita and immediately began searching.

"I heard him calling out for me, and I hollered back," she said. "I thought, 'I'm saved, I know he's going to save me.' "

A former firefighter, Johnston used to joke that he could save her from any disaster.

Rescue workers worked arduously for the next three hours to get her out.

When rescuers finally reached her and began gingerly pulling her out, tremendous pain washed over her. But she hung on.

Hart said she will be moving to her son's home in Ventura. The La Conchita home she bought with her ex-husband about 11 years ago will be abandoned.

"We're cutting our losses. The financial risk is not worth risking our lives."