Ortega Highway’s Perils Leave Mark on Road, Drivers

Some of them play a grim little game twice a day on their way to and from work by counting the telltale signs of accidents--ashes left from warning flares, bits of metal and glass, angry skid marks--that happened since they passed that way a few hours earlier.

Another has heard the seemingly endless screams of a driver trapped inside a mangled vehicle, covered with blood and yelling for God.

At least one is under a doctor’s care for stress.

All of them use the scenic Ortega Highway, with its vistas of mountains and canyons, to commute from their homes in Riverside County to jobs in southern Orange County.

And all of the commuters wonder, “Why is it we never see a police car up there on the Ortega until after something happens?”

Less Expensive Housing

Most of them, like William McMillen, 58, and his wife, Norma, chose to live in Lake Elsinore or in other Riverside County communities for financial reasons: “Housing prices and taxes are too high in Orange County.” No one is sure how many commuters there are daily on Ortega Highway, but after many months of making the round-trip journey himself, R.J. Palacios, 33, a Riverside County resident, says there are probably more than 100 “regulars” on the road to Orange County every morning, and about an equal number--mostly carpenters or construction workers, judging from their vehicles--going the other way. Then, of course, they switch directions at night.

But his estimate is probably short. A traffic count, including commuters, sightseers and all others, has been compiled by California Department of Transportation engineer Charles H. Christopher. Although 1984 figures are not yet complete, Christopher said that in 1983, an average of 3,500 vehicles a day traversed the full distance of about 25 miles--from Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano to Grand Avenue at the foot of the mountains on the Lake Elsinore side--an increase of 500 a day over the year before.

Part of Roadway Widened

The traffic flow increases dramatically--22,000 per day in 1983--along the two or three miles immediately east of San Juan Capistrano, where housing and business developments are sprouting.

However, Christopher said, that portion of the road has been widened to 28 feet, is well marked and has several traffic lights. In 1988, he said, plans call for widening that stretch, plus an additional two miles to the northeast, to 40 feet.

Beyond there, the road will remain 22 feet wide, rated by Caltrans as a “two-lane rural road,” but one that, Christopher said, has twice as many accidents and four times as many fatalities as the statewide average for such roads.

The slaughter and suffering are told in more detail in the figures recorded by the California Highway Patrol.

The line dividing Orange and Riverside counties cuts across Ortega Highway (California 74) about 14 miles northeast of Interstate 5. From Interstate 5 to the county line, the road is relatively level, with gentle curves and a speed limit of 55 m.p.h. in most places. That portion of the highway is under the jurisdiction of the CHP office in south Orange County. According to Officer Ken Daily, in 1984 there were 87 accidents reported there, with 95 people injured and four killed.

Just beyond the Riverside County line, the road begins to change as it cuts into the sides of sheer cliffs, with San Juan Creek far below, and curves sharply, with many twists and turns hidden by brush and by the shoulders of the bluffs.

Riverside CHP Officer John Anderson recorded 88 accidents in 1984 on the stretch from the county line to Grand Avenue, with 55 injured and eight dead.

Both officers said motorcycles were involved in about a third of the accidents.

‘Ortega Not the Culprit’

Debby Messemore, who works at Endevco, a large San Juan Capistrano manufacturing firm, lives in Lake Elsinore. She has been commuting on the Ortega Highway since 1979.

“My husband knows what time I should be home from work,” she said. “If I’m not home by 7 p.m., he comes looking for me because he knows the things that happen.

“The Ortega is not the culprit,” she said. “It is really a beautiful road . . . but the lack of consideration by many drivers and the lack of regular patrols by the CHP are some of the main problems I see.”

In addition to traffic accidents, Messemore said, “you have people being raped, robbed and murdered and thrown over the cliff. You have kamikaze motorcycles, cars practicing for a road race in France. But why is it you never see a police car up there until after something happens?”

“Most people know” there is no routine patrol, she said, so they know where to go “to do these things and not get caught.”

Need for Courtesy Cited

Palacios, who lives in Sunnymead with his wife and three children, agrees with Messemore that the road itself “is fairly safe.”

He believes, however, that most of the problems are caused by a lack of patrols, thoughtlessness and rudeness of many drivers--”some guys in a pickup threw beer cans at me”--and the reluctance of some slow drivers to use the turnouts on the narrow, twisting portions of the highway.

“Let’s be more courteous to each other,” he said. “I, for one, would not like to live with the thought that I created an accident with someone injured or killed.”

Further, he said that at night “it’s pitch black up there and totally unsafe to walk for help.” He would like to see emergency telephones installed at regular intervals, “because now there are only two or three, far apart and not always available--like at ranger stations and Caspers Park. What happens when a woman with kids is stranded?”

Dottie Papin-Griffith has an idea of what happens to stranded drivers.

‘Sat for 45 Minutes’

She and her husband, Will Griffith, live in Lake Elsinore and commute together to their jobs at Endevco.

“Our car broke down one day,” she said. “We sat for 45 minutes before a man stopped. No cops at all. The man who stopped said the only reason he did was that he knew what it was like; he had broken down himself about a week earlier and didn’t get help for a long time. After he went somewhere and called a mechanic, it was another hour and a half before we got going.”

The Griffiths were involved in an accident on Ortega last year. Even now, neither is certain of what happened, only that the car ahead of them tried to pass one that had slowed or stopped, and met a car coming the other way.

“All four cars were involved,” she said. “We got out with some scrapes and bruises.”

“That accident slowed me down,” Will Griffith said. “I’ll admit, I probably was over-driving before.

“There’s a saying around here that if you make it to work, you’ve done a good job.”

Calls Home

They have a 4-year-old son who stays at home with his grandmother. “He’s too young to really worry about us, but it’s gotten so that we call home even if we’re just going to be a very few minutes late,” Papin-Griffith said.

Henrietta Guerra brings her 17-month-old son from Lake Elsinore to stay with a baby sitter while she’s at work in San Juan Capistrano.

“Maybe there was a time when the Ortega was a scenic, restful drive, but not now,” she said. “Regular drivers like me spend 40 to 45 minutes every morning worrying about accidents, building up anger at other drivers, both slow and fast, and knowing that we have to do it all over again that same evening.

“People driving the road must become more considerate of each other.”

Like all the others who talked about the two-lane highway, which has no passing lanes over most of its length, Janie McLean is upset about the condition of the turnouts provided for slower drivers and sightseers. Her husband, Lee, works in Mission Viejo and drops her off in at her job in San Juan Capistrano. They live in El Cariso Village, near the northeastern end of the Ortega Highway.

“The big frustration is those turnouts,” she said. “They’re not paved, and most of them aren’t marked ahead around curves to let you know they’re coming up. And a lot of people are reluctant to turn off onto gravel, with a drop-off from the pavement, when they’re going 40 or 45. You just can’t do it safely, and you have to worry about getting back on the road. Two of my friends have been in accidents on the Ortega. One lost an ear.”

Christopher, of Caltrans, said there are no plans at present to pave the turnouts and that signs “are put up frequently, and just as frequently torn down or stolen. It’s amazing how many signs are missing.”

On the question of patrolling the highway, CHP spokesmen said it is basically a matter of manpower shortages and demands for services on more heavily traveled freeways and highways.

On the Orange County side, Officer Daily said, “Commuter traffic during the week doesn’t justify regular patrolling” on Ortega Highway.

In the south part of the county, he said, extremely heavy commuter traffic is clogging Interstate 5 as well as main roads in Mission Viejo, El Toro and other sections during the morning and evening rush hours.

‘Manpower Problem’

“On our morning shift, we have only six or sometimes eight units (patrol cars) for the entire south county--450 square miles and 20 miles of freeway,” he said. “On the afternoon shift, we have 10 units, so there is a manpower problem during commuting hours.”

In Riverside County, Officer Anderson said, there is a similar shortage of patrol cars and “Ortega just doesn’t have the volume” of commuter traffic to justify regular patrols.

But both CHP officers say it does have more than its share of grisly accidents.

“When you have one up there, it’s almost sure to be a bad one,” Daily said.

And on that, at least, commuters William and Norma McMillen can agree.

Crash Evidence

“We’ve been commuting for six years,” William McMillen said. “I’ve been an eyewitness to four crashes, and I’ve seen the remains of many, many others.

“One kid was trapped in his wreck, covered with blood and yelling for God. You could hardly see him in the wreckage, and he was screaming and carrying on for more than two hours. In this case, the Fire Department and the police were there in about half an hour. It took them the rest of the time to cut him out. I don’t know if he lived.”

Norma McMillen said that each time she sees evidence of another accident, “it stays with me a long time, and it has all affected my life. I’m going to a doctor now for stress tests. I’ve lived with it a long time, and it’s just getting worse.”

William McMillen stared up at the corner of the room in an office at Endevco.

“We play a little game, coming and going. We look for signs of new accidents,” he said. “It’s a hell of a game to play. There’s always something new.”