Terror and Destruction Rained on Mobile Home Park Tenants : 9 Left Homeless; Damage Estimate Exceeds $500,000

Evan Smith sat in her wheelchair, her nose pressed against the yellow police tape that kept her from her home Saturday.

Actually, there was not much for Smith to return to in the Mission Del Amo mobile home park on Bolsa Avenue in Westminster. The home she shared with her husband, Ralph, had been blown off its foundation, much of the roof had been sheared off, the walls had collapsed and water had drenched clothing and furniture during Friday night’s storm.

The winds, water and lightning that whipped through Orange County left nine families homeless, thousands of others without power, and created havoc on roadways.

Mobile Homes Hit

Westminster felt the full force of the storm that suddenly struck at 7:30 p.m. And hardest hit was the Mission Del Amo mobile home park, where Westminster officials Saturday estimated the damage at more than $500,000. Nine coaches were destroyed, and 11 others had damaged roofs, walls and awnings, said Eddie Beal, Westminster’s manager of Emergency Services, who led a team of city employees and volunteers to assess damage to the 217 mobile homes in the park and check for gas leaks.

In the adjoining Kensington Gardens mobile home park, 24 of 123 homes suffered mild to moderate damage, mostly to roofs and awnings, Beal said.

Jeanette Anthony, 66, a retired waitress with emphysema, bronchitis and asthma, returned to her heavily damaged home in Mission Del Amo on Saturday to pick up a few things she will need at her daughter’s home in San Pedro.

She was most anxious to pick up her oxygen tanks. “I didn’t know fear until last night,” Anthony said. “I was sitting on my couch watching the news and taking my oxygen when I heard a lot of noise.

“Then the wind blew in my front window and knocked me off the couch. Glass was flying and everything started falling down.”

Her electrically operated oxygen tanks stopped, and a panicked Anthony went to her phone to call the paramedics. “But my phone was dead,” she said.

When the lights came back on after 10 minutes, Anthony said she went to her door to call for help. “But nothing came out of my mouth. . . . I’d been off my oxygen and couldn’t breathe.”

A neighbor saw her standing in the door, came in and helped her start her oxygen units again.

Anthony said her $33,000 coach was a total loss.

Evan Smith, confined to a wheelchair by polio, waited behind the police line as her husband, Ralph, went to their home and packed a few things to take with them to their daughter’s home in Irvine.

Smith, 57, suffered the only reported injury in the storm, a bruised left shoulder. Smith said her husband was at work and she was alone in the kitchen when a sudden torrent of rain and wind hit her roof and walls.

The gale-force winds knocked the coach off its foundations, throwing her to the floor, Smith said. “Then things started flying and the lights went out.

“I just lay on the floor, afraid to move. The lights were out and I thought I might cut myself on the stuff that had fallen on the floor.”

Ten minutes later, the lights came back on and Smith dragged herself across the floor, pulled herself up a wall and reached for the phone to call her husband.

Before he could arrive, Marie Gansmann, who lives next door, knocked on the door to check on Smith. Smith screamed for help, and Gansmann and her friend Jean Layton climbed into the creaking coach and helped her back into her wheelchair.

The three women and others, all of whom said they had insurance, waited Saturday for their agents to arrive and assess the damage. Beal said low-cost government loans would be available to those without insurance or to cover costs that insurance did not.

Power Lost

The storm also caused more than 13,000 homes to lose power Friday night for up to six hours, most of them in San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Beach and San Clemente. Lightning damage caused blackouts to 3,500 customers in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach.

Storm damage to circuits caused an additional 6,000 homes in San Juan Capistrano to lose power at 10:40 a.m. Saturday, said Fred Vaughn, a spokesman for San Diego Gas and Electric.

Radio station KOCM-FM, located in the Fashion Island Shopping Center, was off the air for about 3 1/2 hours Friday after lightning and heavy winds damaged its equipment, station spokesman Jack Siegel said. Winds also snapped off the top of the mall’s huge Christmas tree.

The California Highway Patrol reported a spate of fender benders and other minor accidents in Orange County both Friday night and Saturday because of rain-slicked highways. But no one was seriously injured in those accidents, the CHP said.

Beal said he hoped to begin cleanup operations at the park today. But the weather may hamper those plans because another storm, albeit lacking the ferocity of Friday evening’s gusty rush-hour deluge, could be arriving in Southern California late tonight or Monday, forecasters said.

There is a 20% chance that a second Arctic storm front will hit the Los Angeles Basin, said Dan Bowman, a meteorologist at WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times.

But he added, “It won’t pack as much punch as the one that moved through Friday night.”

In Los Angeles County, that storm caused at least 200 rain-related accidents. Many roads were flooded, including the Harbor Freeway at Imperial Highway, which was under water for almost three hours.

In Santa Monica, police took 16 drenched homeless people to a Holiday Inn after winds scattered their tents and belongings across the sand. The Red Cross provided shelter for 20 residents of a flooded apartment building in Los Angeles.

On Saturday, the storm’s legacy was cloudy weather. But it was a boon for surfers and area ski resorts, which reported receiving two to four inches of snow.