Winds Wreak Death, Damage and Blackouts

Santa Ana winds gusting up to 90 m.p.h. ripped paths of destruction through Southern California early Wednesday--blasting out windows, felling trees, toppling trucks and planes and battering homes.

Authorities blamed the winds for the death of a man who stepped on a downed power line in Azusa and were investigating whether the gusty conditions contributed to the deaths of three others, who were crushed in a chain-reaction accident involving a tractor-trailer rig on the Foothill Freeway.

Transmitter Knocked Out

Almost half a million customers lost electrical power for up to 12 hours, including about 100,000 customers in Orange County. And television station KCET (Channel 28) was off the air for about 90 minutes after its transmitter atop Mt. Wilson was knocked out.

The winds are expected to abate today--there’s even a slight chance of some showers tonight to briefly relieve the extremely dry conditions associated with the winds. Relative humidity dipped to an arid 4% Wednesday after reaching only as high as 16%.

But forecasters said the Santa Anas should be back again in full force on Friday.

The strongest winds Wednesday were recorded in Orange County, where the Sheriff’s Department clocked a gust between 90 and 100 m.p.h. at 4 a.m. in Newport Harbor, where several small boats tore loose from their moorings and two of them sank. A 70-foot wooden dock was also lost at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

Sustained gusts of 50 m.p.h. were recorded at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, where five small planes were damaged. A CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter was blown over at the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro.

Elsewhere, 15 light planes were overturned by the winds at Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport and two light aircraft were torn from their moorings at Van Nuys Airport.

The gusts were so strong in the Azusa-Glendora area Wednesday morning that the California Highway Patrol closed eight miles of the Foothill Freeway to all traffic at 4:30 a.m., after at least three big trucks were blown over.

In the fatal Foothill Freeway accident, three Sylmar men were killed after they got out of two vehicles to retrieve empty sandbags that had fallen from a pickup truck. Officials identified the victims, who were part of an early morning convoy of workers traveling to a Canyon Country construction site, as Juan Martinez, 47, Rudy Calsada, 46, and Anacleto Hidalgo Hernandez, 26.

Rig Veers Onto Shoulder

Authorities said Martinez, who was driving the pickup, pulled to the shoulder of the transition road linking the westbound Foothill and the northbound Golden State freeways along with Hernandez, who was driving a car.

The three men were standing between the vehicles when a tractor-trailer rig driven by David A. Condon, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, came around a bend and veered onto the shoulder, hitting the car and pushing it into the rear of the pickup, crushing the victims.

“We are looking into the possibility of it being wind-related,” CHP Officer Ralph Elvira said. “That is based on the (tractor-trailer) driver’s statement that a gust of wind forced him to veer onto the shoulder.”

Amtrak said downed trees in the San Diego area blocked the rails and disrupted signals on the Los Angeles-San Diego line, delaying traffic on the route for up to 1 1/2 hours.

Wind-whipped blazes were ignited throughout the Southland. In Villa Park, firefighters fought a fast-moving blaze that broke out at 9:30 a.m., heavily damaging rooftops of two homes and causing light to moderate damage to roofs of five others nearby. Seventy-five firefighters from six surrounding cities rushed to the blaze to prevent it from spreading to other shake-shingle rooftops in the neighborhood.

Winds also hampered firefighting efforts in Huntington Beach, where a downed power line sparked a house blaze at 11:30 a.m. that inflicted an estimated $210,000 in damage before it could be contained half an hour later.

The fire, in the 18000 block of Gregory Lane, started on the roof and engulfed the rest of the home. Strong winds continued to rekindle the flames, making it difficult for firefighters to completely extinguish them, said Martha Werth, spokeswoman for the Orange County Fire Department.

The fatality in Azusa occurred after another fire was started by a downed power line on the front lawn of a home on Orangecrest Avenue in the Azusa area about 2:15 a.m. Friends said a neighbor, Julio Mendoza, 39, ran over to help extinguish the blaze. He died at the scene when he came in contact with the power line.

Wire Whipped by Wind

“I could see the wire, jumping about in the wind, and then I saw Mr. Mendoza, lying there on the ground, on top of it,” said a resident of the home that burned, who asked that his name not be used.

“I guess he was trying to put out the fire with a hose” when he came in contact with the power line, the man said. “He was just trying to help.”

In Arcadia, the winds blew down a 60-foot-long plaster wall at the west end of the Santa Anita Race Track grandstand several hours before racing fans arrived. The strong gusts also tore some roofing off the grandstand and some barns. Damage was estimated at about $100,000, track officials said, but there were no injury reports, and the day’s racing proceeded as usual.

Damage at Wayne Airport

At John Wayne Airport, extensive damage was reported to two light planes that were flipped over by the wind. Moderate damage was reported to three other aircraft that were hit when one of the planes flipped over, airport officials said.

At El Toro, Marine Corps officials had no immediate damage estimate on the Sea Stallion that tipped over.

Bob Ross, an airplane mechanic at John Wayne, said he had just reported for work shortly before 6 a.m. on the west side of the airport when a single-engine Cessna was flipped up against the Martin Avionics building, coming to a rest nose down.

“The wind just caught it and picked it up like a toothpick,” Ross said.

Neither of the planes that were flipped over in the wind were tied down on the tarmac. One was parked near a hangar which had no tie-downs. Martin Avionics had its training plane out for maintenance at the time of the windstorm.

“We weren’t expecting the wind,” said Martin Avionics owner Stan Erickson, who estimated damage to his $10,000 Cessna would run “in the thousands.”

The winds did not disrupt airline schedules at John Wayne, although student training flights were canceled at Fullerton Municipal Airport.

Cruiser, Sailboat Sink

In Newport Harbor, where the Sheriff’s Department recorded sustained winds of 30 to 40 m.p.h. throughout the morning, a 34-foot cabin cruiser and a 33-foot sailboat sank at their moorings, according to department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson. The Harbor Patrol was kept busy rescuing loose vessels.

The owner of the cabin cruiser, who declined to give his name, said his boat went down in 15 feet of water about 8:05 a.m. after a wind-loosened catamaran apparently slammed into it and punctured its hull. The catamaran also ran up over a sailboat, breaking its mast, said the cabin cruiser owner.

In Huntington Beach, the wind ripped the roof off the Cafe Express restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway. It also tore off the canvas roof of a dining area at Maxwell’s Restaurant next to the Huntington Beach Pier, but restaurant officials said the canvas was easily rolled back in place.

In Trabuco Canyon, winds estimated at 70 m.p.h. flipped a 50-foot construction trailer off a shopping center parking lot and down a 20-foot embankment onto Trabuco Canyon Road. Bud Runyon, superintendent of the Santa Ana Mountains County Water District office across the street, said he telephoned the owners of the trailer after seeing it blown off its blocks. A few moments later, he said, he watched as a gust of wind swept the trailer over the hill.

“I called the owner back and said to not worry about coming down,” Runyon said.

Gil Leach, owner of the trailer, said he and his wife had used it for the last three years as a field office to manage the Live Oak Center, which they developed. He said the trailer, which he valued at $5,000, was a total loss.

“It actually looks like a plane crash out there,” Leach said.

The trailer was quickly removed from Trabuco Canyon Road, where it was blocking a bike lane.

Public works crews throughout the county were kept busy removing fallen trees and limbs from highways, streets and property. The Orange County Environmental Management Agency’s public works division, on Wednesday alone, handled 72 reports of fallen trees.

“They’ve been runnin’ us all day,” said county tree trimmer Bob Rasch as his crew worked to clear fallen tree limbs from the side of the roadway on Skyline Drive in unincorporated Lemon Heights.

Some of the heaviest tree and limb damage occurred in the south part of the county. Rick Schooley, county chief of line maintenance, said neighborhoods in the canyon areas, as well as Mission Viejo, El Toro and Tustin, were particularly hard hit.

Some of the trees toppled onto cars and houses, causing extensive damage. In Costa Mesa, three cars were crushed by a falling tree. In Laguna Beach, two homes were damaged when winds toppled a huge oak tree in the pre-dawn hours. The tree crashed through the roof of one of the residences in Laguna Canyon and came to a rest near one sleeping resident’s bed.

Some of the tree limbs fell on power lines, knocking out electricity until utility crews could make repairs.

Officials at Southern California Edison Co., which services the bulk of Orange County, reported that 96,800 customers had experienced power outages as a result of high winds Wednesday morning. Edison spokesman Gene Carter said outages lasted between 30 seconds and six hours. All but 600 of those customers had power restored by Wednesday afternoon.

Officials at San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which serves part of the south county, reported outages affecting 20,000 customers in both Orange and northern San Diego counties. The utility did not break down how many of the outages were in Orange County. Those outages lasted between an hour and an hour and a half, a utility spokesman said. All power there was restored Wednesday.

And in Anaheim, a spokesman for the city Utilities Department reported power outages affecting 50 residences. All power was expected to be restored there by late Wednesday.

Church Hit Twice

Public works officials cleaning up the mess compared the severity of this windstorm to another that hit the Southland in December. However, they said fewer trees were felled this time because the previous storm had already uprooted the weaker ones.

One local church has felt the impact of both storms. The December storm blew out the 37-foot-high plexiglass window adorning the front entrance of St. John Neumann Church in Irvine. On Wednesday, boards that had been nailed to cover that window were likewise blown out, said church pastor Colm Conlon.

A front window was also blown out Wednesday at a furniture store in La Habra, where police said they fielded calls from people wanting assistance in putting up barricades in front of their windows.

Police throughout the county were kept busy rushing to the hundreds of false burglar alarms that were triggered by the winds. As one Huntington Beach dispatcher wearily put it, “We’ve been forced to work three times as hard.”

Emergency workers throughout the region were able to breathe easily Wednesday night, but they faced the threat of renewed destructive winds.

Dan Bowman, a meteorologist for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said the Santa Ana winds should return again Friday.

Times staff writers Nieson Himmel in Los Angeles, Andrea Estapa in San Diego County, Louis Sahagun in San Bernardino County and Doug Brown, Lonn Johnston, Lanie Jones, Carlos Lozano, Hugo Martin and Carla Rivera in Orange County contributed to this article.