Strong Winds Whip Southland : 237,000 Lose Power; Dozens of Trees Uprooted in Orange County

Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds with gusts up to 80 m.p.h. slashed through Southern California on Saturday, tearing off roofs, uprooting trees and knocking out power to at least 237,000 customers.

No injuries had been attributed to the winds by late Saturday, however, and a large part of Orange County was seemingly untouched by the northeasterly winds, part of a massive inland windstorm expected to last through this afternoon.

Emergency storm workers said that in Orange County, the brunt of the storm was felt in canyon areas and in eastern Orange, Santa Ana and Tustin. Gusts of up to 80 m.p.h. blew 60- to 70-pound steel sheets from a high-rise under construction, took the roofs off an apartment house and at least two homes and demolished a garage.

Damage was also reported throughout coastal, central Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino County areas.

The winds, blowing steadily at 40 to 50 m.p.h., prevented roofers from working on an eight-story building across from Childrens Hospital of Orange County, from which 10-foot-long sheets of metal sailed into the street throughout the morning, said Orange police Sgt. Paul Ordonez.

‘Horrendous Problems’ “I’ve been on for six hours and I haven’t had the chance to go to the bathroom yet. We have some horrendous problems in the city today,” Ordonez said. “Our major problem is the high-rise . . . but we closed La Veta (Avenue) near Pepper (Street) for about a half-mile so there haven’t been any injuries, thank God.”

By midday, more than 50 large trees had been uprooted by the wind, landing on homes, cars or major roadways, according to Bill Reiter, director of the Orange County Storm Operations Center. Reiter said there were no injuries but that 40 to 50 people normally off on weekends were working just to keep roads clear.

“We’re setting the stuff on the side of the road for now,” Reiter said. “There’s just too much going on. We’ll probably spend four days next week, though, just cleaning up the debris.”

At 918 E. Mardell Ave. in Orange, Chuck Plumberg was having his coffee and reading the morning paper when a 75-foot pine tree came crashing down on the roof of his home.

“I heard this loud roar and then the branches were hanging down in front of our front picture window,” Plumberg, 61, said.

“It’s my neighbor’s tree, but I guess it’s mine now,” said Plumberg, whose wife, Essie, also was home when the tree fell. “I can’t really tell the damage up there until we get the tree moved, but it’s sort of in the attic.... There isn’t anything else blowin’ in here yet so we’re OK. I’m glad there aren’t too many more big trees out there, though.”

In Santa Ana, gusts of up to 50 m.p.h. uprooted a 60-foot-tall pine tree from Mike Gomez’s front yard on Fairlawn Street, blocking traffic until county workers chopped out a 15-foot hole for cars to pass through. The ends of the tree, Gomez said, were left at both sides of the street.

“Boy, this is some birthday present,” said Gomez, a glass blower who turned 35 Saturday. “I guess my birthday present is just that no one got hurt. . . . I’m just glad it fell away from the house. My neighbor isn’t even mad either.”

According to Reiter, cities north and west of Santa Ana were reporting strong winds but no major wind-related damage.

“It’s kind of odd,” Reiter said. “Anything south of Santa Ana is gale forces. We have a report from the sheriff’s office that winds were gusting up to 100 m.p.h. on the wind machines (on canyon) peaks. We’ve got trees down in all the canyon areas as far as the Orange Parks area and south as far as Capistrano Beach. But we’ve heard of nothing from Anaheim, Garden Grove, Brea or anyplace else west of Santa Ana.”

A steady stream of power outages busied more than 120 Southern California Edison workers, who had to go house to house to repair downed power lines, according to Fred Mickelson, Edison’s Orange County operations manager. He said there had been no large areas without power, but lines in certain pockets of the county had been broken between individual homes, making for more time-consuming repairs by workers.

“It started about 2:30 this morning, and it’s just continually picked up,” said Mickelson, who predicted his staff would be working throughout the night. “As soon as we get one back up we get another one down, so it’s been a steady 4,000 people out of power all day.”

High-Pressure System National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Mentzer said the winds, which kicked into high gear shortly after midnight, are the result of a high-pressure system over the northern Rockies, causing offshore, low-level wind flow and funnels through the mountains, valleys and canyons of Southern California.

“It increases the wind speed dramatically,” Mentzer said. “It’s pretty classic Santa Ana wind conditions. . . . It’s hit just about all of Southern California. I’ve seen it all the way from the coastline through to the desert and the mountains. It’s a pretty widespread wind condition.”

By about 10 a.m., Mentzer said, the north to northeasterly winds were persistently blowing at 30 to 45 m.p.h. and accelerating to gusts of up to 80 m.p.h. in many parts of Orange County, including John Wayne Airport, where no takeoff or landing problems were reported.

A pilot weather briefer at Ontario Airport, from which Orange County pilots also receive flying conditions, said the wind condition had caused severe turbulence below 12,000 feet and a low-level wind sheer, which dramatically changes the speed and direction of wind within short distances, making takeoffs and landings particularly dangerous. However, there were no small plane warnings except at a Rialto airport, which early in the day discouraged landings.

The California Highway Patrol issued a travel advisory for most of Southern California, warning campers and trailers to stay off the freeways, where wind-swept tumbleweeds and dust swirls were making for adventurous driving. No major wind-related traffic accidents were reported in Orange County by late afternoon, a CHP spokeswoman said.

It was remarkable, emergency workers said, that the wind didn’t cause more damage.

Garage in Orange Blows Down In Orange, a detached residential garage literally blew away at 105 Calle Alta, landing in a pile of rubble at the city water storage tank next door, according to Orange Fire Battalion Chief Pete Pedersen. The residents of the home, to which there was no damage, were not at home at the time, he said.

In the eastern fringe of the city, Pedersen said, winds were reported at a consistent 60 to 70 m.p.h., with gusts of up to 100 m.p.h. in parts of the Lemon Heights neighborhood.

At least two other roofs--or large parts of them--were reportedly blown off dwellings, one of them from atop an apartment building at 206 N. Prospect Ave. All of the residents were able to remain in their apartments, fire officials said.

“We got hit pretty hard with the wind, but it does seem to be calming down here now,” Pedersen said early in the afternoon. “It was blowing this morning as hard as I’ve ever seen it blow. It took one helluva wind to blow a whole new garage down. It took it down like a tornado, the walls were waving in the breeze when I got there.”

By sundown Saturday, the Plumbergs had had the towering pine tree removed from their house, cut into tiny pieces by a tree-trimming firm that left a $400 bill for their neighbors, Essie Plumberg said. During the tree removal, however, the couple’s cable television lines were severed. A corner of the roof is gone, but only visibly missing from outside the home, she said.

“Luckily the little trees (three of them) stopped the big one or it would have gone right through the front window,” she said. “With the way things are going, we may be reading books tonight. . . . It’s been kind of a nutty day here. We won’t have to pick out the (pine) needles out of the pool anymore, that’s one good thing.”

Elsewhere in the Southland, emergency workers were kept at least as busy as in Orange County.

Roof Blows Off Glenda Fowler, a resident of the Montecito Heights area of Los Angeles, said she called the Fire Department around 10 a.m. when she noticed that strong gusts were beginning to lift a corner of the gabled roof of her two-story home on Evadale Drive.

A few minutes later, as she and two firefighters watched helplessly, half the roof tore away.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” she said. “There was a sort of suction that lifted all the furniture off the floor and dropped it. . . . Every glass, vase and lamp broke. . . .”

In Glendale, dozens of automobiles were crushed by trees falling along a mile-wide front in the exclusive Kenneth Road area.

Tom Dean, who lives on Alameda Avenue, said he awoke about 4 a.m. to the sound of winds shrieking around his home.

“It was blowing so hard, you knew something was going to break,” he recalled.

Dean was right.

Shortly before 5 a.m., a massive pine tree toppled onto his year-old sports coupe, demolishing the front end of the car.

Winds toppled seven or eight tractor-trailer rigs in the western San Bernardino County area between Cajon Pass and Chino, leaving one of them protruding over the edge of a transition road overpass at the junction of Interstates 10 and 15.

In Ontario, a gust hurled a truck trailer filled with teddy bears off the back of a piggyback railroad car, scattering the toy animals across an open field adjacent to a train yard.

“We’re recovering them everywhere,” Lt. Ray Rump of the Ontario Police Department said.

At Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island, three small craft were lost in heavy seas. Mary Salisbury, who works in the Harbor Master’s office, said two of the boats were smashed when they were driven onto the beach and the third was torn apart at its mooring.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that by Saturday afternoon, about 37,000 customers had suffered wind-related power outages, primarily in the Highland Park, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Montecito Heights and Hollywood areas.

The Southern California Edison Co. said power failures that began about 4 a.m. Saturday had affected about 200,000 customers in La Crescenta, La Canada-Flintridge, Tujunga, Sierra Madre, Arcadia, Azusa, Monrovia, Montebello, Upland, Ontario, Chino, San Bernardino and portions of Orange County. Times staff writers Julia Fortier, Patricia Hurtado, Gary Jarlson, Myron Levin, Doug Smith and John Kendall contributed to this article.