Local News in Brief : El Toro : Accident Occurs After Outage Douses Signals

More than 2,800 homes and businesses in the El Toro area were left briefly without power Thursday when an underground electrical line failed. The outage also cut power to traffic lights in an area near Laguna Hills Mall, causing one chain-reaction accident involving three cars.

Gene Carter, a spokesman for Southern California Edison Co., said the failure came at 12:18 p.m. on Hon Street just south of Alicia Parkway. By 1:11 p.m., Carter said, most of the service had been restored to the 2,800 customers, which included one small shopping center.

The cause of the power outage was not immediately known.

Officer Brian Dean of the California Highway Patrol said the outage caused at least one accident which left three people slightly injured.

The accident occurred when a 1986 Ford Thunderbird, driven by Luana Hensien of El Toro, was northbound on Paseo de Valencia heading into the Alicia Parkway intersection. The traffic light was not working, so Hensien continued through the intersection, Dean said.

Her car collided with a GMC truck driven by Allen Derevjanik of Cypress, which was eastbound on Alicia.

The impact pushed Hensien’s car into a signal light pole, and pushed the truck into a third vehicle, a Honda Accord driven by Edith Tuttle of Laguna Hills.

Hensien was taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo with head cuts. Tuttle and her passenger were not injured, while Allen and his passenger, Mark Horn of Anaheim, were taken to Saddleback Hospital with minor cuts and bruises.