Storms Hit Mountains, Deserts; Cause Fatal Crash

Three people, including a young boy, were killed Friday afternoon when their light plane disintegrated in one of Southern California’s driving, lightning-laced rainstorms and crashed in Cajon Pass, San Bernardino County authorities said.

The string of thundershowers that for the second consecutive day struck Southland desert and mountain areas also washed out roads and caused extensive flooding in the Morongo Valley communities of Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms.

“Tornado-like” winds whipped through a mobile home park in Needles on Friday evening, destroying three homes, damaging four others and injuring four people, police in the city near the Arizona border said.

In Palm Springs, nearly 150 stranded tramway riders had to be rescued by helicopter when a sudden storm over the San Jacinto Mountains knocked out power and covered parking lots with mud and debris. Police said the recent Cabazon fire had destroyed mountain brush that could have held back much of the water.

A Sheriff’s Department rescue team hampered by the weather found the wreckage of the plane scattered over brushy, rugged terrain near Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass. They said there were no survivors.

The San Bernardino County coroner’s office said the dead were a man, a woman and a boy 4 or 5 years old. Their names were withheld pending notification of relatives.

The aircraft was said to be a Piper Archer II, a four-place single engine monoplane.

Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Bryant said witnesses told of seeing the plane begin to disintegrate in the air shortly after 1 p.m., then plunge into the Mormon Rock area just south of California 138.

Minutes later, the blinding rainstorm caused a series of traffic accidents in the pass a short distance away. At least 10 vehicles were involved in what the California Highway Patrol said were two non-injury accidents and two minor-injury accidents south of Cajon Summit.

The storm was produced by the continuing flow of subtropical air from Mexico that prompted more flash-flood alerts in the mountains and deserts of several Southern California counties Friday.

Particularly hard hit was the San Bernardino County community of Yucca Valley, where as many as 50 homes were flooded with as much as two or three feet of water and roads were made impassable by mud and debris.

The Yucca Valley Fire Department had so many calls for help during the 45-minute cloudburst and immediately after that it could not keep up with them.

“It’s the worst (flooding) I’ve seen as far as water running across the highway,” said Mike Fagan, a firefighter-paramedic.

Five homes in Twentynine Palms reportedly sustained minor flooding. Joshua Tree National Monument officials advised campers to leave the park.

Twentynine Palms Fire Chief Michael Weston said the rain was intense from noon to about 3 p.m. But the biggest problem he had was a motorist who ran into the rear of a fire truck because of rain-blurred visibility.

In Palm Springs, the Aerial Tramway was shut down by a storm-caused power failure as two inches of rain and sleet fell at the Long Valley Ranger Station atop the mountain. The road and three parking lots below were inundated.

With 100 tram passengers stranded at the top and another 45 at the lower station, helicopters were dispatched to begin ferrying them into Palm Springs, where those needing places to stay were taken to hotels. Police said their cars would remain in the parking lots until the road was cleared. California 111 into Palm Springs was closed to westbound traffic at 4:20 p.m. because of debris and flash flooding, but it was reopened about 7:30 p.m.

It was the second day of what the National Weather Service called the “monsoon season” assault on Southern California deserts and mountains that has brought strong winds, lightning, hail, rain and flash floods.

More Thunderstorms Possible

Light easterly winds in the upper air could push some of the mountain thunderstorms toward the San Fernando, San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys by early today, the weather service warned. But drier air was expected to move in beginning today.

Officials were especially worried that lightning strikes might spark brush fires, renewing the siege that has strained the state’s firefighting resources for weeks.

In the meantime, more than 1,200 firefighters hope to contain by tonight a blaze that began with an illegal campfire and charred at least 1,600 acres of timberland north of Lake Shasta in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

U.S. Forest Service officials said they were considering criminal prosecution of two campers who admitted that their campfire got out of hand. A mobile home and two other structures were destroyed.

Big Sur Fire Contained

Another army of firefighters finally gained full containment of the blaze that destroyed nearly 50,000 acres of brush and timber in the scenic Big Sur area of Monterey County. That fire began with a lightning strike two weeks ago. It destroyed six homes and an estimated $24-million worth of vegetation and watershed resources, according to the Forest Service.

In Southern California, the massive Wheeler Canyon fire, set by an unidentified arsonist, was declared officially controlled after it had blackened 118,000 acres and caused $65 million in watershed damage. It had threatened Ojai and Carpinteria.

Southern California Edison Co. denied that one of its construction crews accidentally started the recent Cabazon fire that burned more than 20,000 acres in the San Jacinto Mountains near Palm Springs. That fire was contained July 7.

Forest Service Investigator Ron Huxman said Tuesday that the fire had been “directly linked to a work site being prepared for future use by Southern California Edison.” He said the exact cause would be released after completion of tests.

No Determination Yet

However, California Department of Forestry Capt. Chris Wurzell said it would take at least another month to determine how the fire started and who was responsible. He noted, however, that an Edison crew was working on a transmission line about 400 feet north of where the blaze started. If Edison is deemed responsible, he said, the company will be charged the $1.6-million cost of fighting the blaze.

Edison spokesman Russ Hawkes said the utility has no knowledge of what “our identification with the fire is supposed to be,” and that the Forest Service had not talked to the company about it. “We did have construction in that area,” Hawkes said, “but it is our understanding the fire started hundreds of yards from where our people were.”