WESTMINSTER : Transformer Fire Forces Evacuation

More than 45 residents of Westminster Senior Apartments were evacuated by firefighters Tuesday after a fellow resident crashed his car into a 12,000-volt transformer, knocking out the complex’s power and sending a ball of sparks and smoke into one wing.

Dozens of residents, some who could not walk on their own and many clearly shaken, were led to the complex’s clubhouse while firefighters and Southern California Edison workers extinguished the small electrical fires crackling around the transformer.

Officials said a series of small explosions began about 10 a.m. after Joo Sun Lee, 71, lost control of his rust-colored Volvo and rammed into the six-foot-high transformer, toppling it from its concrete pad and knocking out power. Parts of the apartment complex were without electricity for most of the day.

Westminster Fire Capt. Craig Campbell said Lee was leaving a parking space when he apparently backed into a tree, snapping it in half. With his tires stuck over a curb, Lee gunned his engine, and the car lurched forward into the transformer, Campbell said.

Lee, who appeared dazed after the accident, received a cut to the head and a minor blow to the back of his head but declined to be taken to a hospital. There were no other injuries.

Many of the more than 300 residents of the four-wing apartment complex at 13920 Hoover St. milled about in the parking lot, most saying they initially suspected the small explosions were caused by an earthquake or aftershocks from the recent string of quakes. Campbell said only the four-story wing closest to the transformer was evacuated.

“We wanted to play it safe,” he said. “A 12,000-volt transformer has a lot of juice, and we had smoke going up into these apartments. You can imagine the panic that must have set in for some of the older residents.”

One resident, Dee Crosby, 71, said she was just leaving the shower when her bathroom mirror filled with the reflection of black smoke billowing from the transformer directly below her third-story apartment.

“It was like fireworks going off right underneath my window, and I was standing there, still wet, when I looked out the window,” Crosby said about 30 minutes after the crash, still wearing only a robe because of the hasty evacuation. “I thought for sure all the smoke and noise coming from the car meant it was going to explode.”

The same thought occurred to Sondra Rinker, 28, a Midway City resident who was visiting the complex to help her grandmother with housecleaning. Rinker said she ran to the porch of her grandmother’s ground-floor apartment when she heard Lee’s car strike the tree, arriving just in time to see the car hit the transformer. From her vantage point, about 25 yards away, Rinker said she could see him hunched over in the driver’s seat and sparks raining down on the hood of the car.

“I jumped over the (porch) railing and ran over there and started banging on his window,” she said. “He was kind of out of it. He was leaning over trying get his radio to go back in the dashboard, and I was yelling, ‘Sir, you’ve got to get out of the car.’ ”

Rinker said she opened the door, put the car into park and took the keys from the ignition. She said she tried to coax a reluctant Lee from the car, and finally, as a series of loud pops and crackles sprang from the transformer, she forcibly pulled him to the sidewalk.

Lee, who only speaks Korean, was assisted by his son-in-law, Gene Du, who said his family worried that Lee’s driving skills have been deteriorating.

“The whole family has been against him driving the car, but he wouldn’t listen,” Du said. “He is stubborn. And so this is what happened.”