Six Injured by Lightning in Surprise Storms

A swiftly moving band of thundershowers sprinted through Southern California late Tuesday afternoon, hurling lightning bolts that injured six farm workers near Carlsbad, knocked out power in South Pasadena, interrupted the California Angels-Milwaukee Brewers baseball game in Anaheim and pelted several areas with wind, rain and hail.

Los Angeles Civic Center got its first measurable rainfall of the season--.10 of an inch by 9 p.m.--and thunder continued to rumble from time to time as the evening hours passed.

Elsewhere, however, the storm did more than rumble:

Carlsbad firefighters said six men were injured when lightning struck the earth a few feet from catering trucks serving snacks to farm workers at a tomato farm in northern San Diego County.

None of the six was actually struck by the lightning, Carlsbad Fire Capt. Cody Osburn said, and all were conscious when rescue units arrived. But two men were taken by helicopter to the burn unit at the University of California, San Diego, Medical Center, where they were reported in fair condition. Two of the less seriously hurt were treated at Carlsbad hospitals, while the remaining two were hospitalized for observation.

Winds gusting to 40 m.p.h. and hailstones the size of large peas were reported in Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage, where some streets were flooded for a time and an unofficial rain gauge in the vicinity recorded .23 of an inch of rain in just 30 minutes.

Riverside County sheriff’s deputies said a dozen homes in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert reported floors covered by water during the brief deluge, but the flooding receded quickly. There was no immediate dollar estimate of damage.

Rain and Hail

A total of 1.55 inches of rain and a blanket of marble-sized hailstones fell in an hour at Mt. Laguna in San Diego County, but there were no reports of damage.

Most of the town of South Pasadena was without electricity early in the evening, when lightning struck a guy wire leading to a Southern California Edison Co. power line at Columbia Street and Fair Oaks Avenue, causing an arc that overloaded the system.

In addition to the blackout of business establishments and residences, street lights and traffic lights were out of commission for several hours and police directed traffic by hand at major intersections.

Another power failure attributed to the storm knocked out most of the lights at Anaheim Stadium in the bottom of the fourth inning. Authorities said power was restored 15 minutes later.

20,000 Customers

In all, Edison reported that about 20,000 customers were blacked out during the night--10,000 of them in the East Los Angeles-Whittier-South Pasadena area of Los Angeles County, and 10,000 more in northern Orange County from Yorba Linda to Huntington Beach--while the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it had about 1,000 individual, isolated failures.

Utility spokesmen said about 70% of the blackouts had been repaired and power restored by 9 p.m., and crews had been called to work through the night.

Other lightning strikes were reported in Highland Park and West Los Angeles, but police said no major damage resulted.

A flash-flood watch was in effect for the deserts and mountains of Southern California through most of the early evening Tuesday.

The National Weather Service said skies should be fair again by this morning, but the threat of new storms remains because of a continued flow of moist, unstable tropical air moving north from Mexico.

High temperature at Los Angeles Civic Center on Tuesday was 83 degrees, with relative humidity ranging from 51% to 87%, and forecasters said it should be about the same today.