Hail, Rain Blitz County Briefly, Disrupting Power

A brief thunderstorm blitzed portions of Orange County on Sunday, pelting some residents with hail and knocking out electricity to several hundred customers, including Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

The unstable weather system produced several cloudbursts and led to a rash of automobile accidents, including one in which a 17-year-old boy was seriously injured.

Some residents said the hail began during thundershowers that moved through the central county shortly after 11 a.m.

About 400 Southern California Edison customers--including Western Medical Center--were left without power for several hours Sunday after lightning struck a number of transformer boxes in northern Santa Ana and Orange, a spokesman for the electric company said.

The Santa Ana hospital switched to auxiliary power sources for two hours, hospital supervisor Jan Inlow said. The radiology department was shut down during that time and the hospital was unable to perform X-rays in the emergency room for a brief period, she said.

“Nothing was scheduled and there were no problems with the patients,” Inlow said. “Nobody seemed to panic. Everybody took it in stride and they were oohing and ahing about the hail.”

Lightning struck at least 33 transformers, each of which supplies electricity to about 12 customers, according to Edison spokesman Gene Carter. He said most of the power outages occurred at residences and were repaired within 3 to 4 hours.

“There weren’t any circuits damaged. This happened in several little pockets in the north Santa Ana-Orange area,” Carter said.

Law enforcement officials throughout the county said they responded to a number of minor automobile accidents that occurred on the rain-slick highways. The only serious accident by late Sunday afternoon had involved a 17-year-old Garden Grove boy who lost control of his car and crashed into a utility pole on Haster Street in Anaheim.

Roan Von Tran was listed in serious condition at UCI Medical Center on Sunday night, suffering from head and internal injuries, according to Anaheim Police Lt. Bill Wright.

Tran apparently was driving at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his 1984 Nissan. The car crashed into a utility pole with such force that the car was split in half, Wright said. The front half of the car knocked down a tree and Tran was thrown about 50 feet from the car, the officer said.

“We’ve had a lot of accidents, but this is the only major one. It’s typical when you have wet streets. We’ve had a lot of fender-benders. Every time it rains we have a lot of collisions,” Wright said.

The storm system that caused showers and thundershowers around the Southland was expected to move out of the area Sunday night, forecasters said. But a weaker system was expected to move into Southern California this afternoon, according to meteorologist Dave Beusterien of WeatherData, which supplies forecasts to The Times.

“It won’t be nearly as strong as the one we’ve seen the last couple of days, but it will provide a slight chance of showers late in the afternoon along the coastal regions of Orange County and the Los Angeles Basin,” Beusterien said. “But it will be nothing to the degree that we have seen the past few days.”

Beusterien said the new storm system will probably result in less than .10 of an inch of rain. On Sunday, Santa Ana reported 0.4 of an inch and San Clemente reported 0.35, he said.

Temperatures today will range from the upper 50s to the mid-60s.