O.C. Twister Is Topper to Furious Storm

A tornado ripped through a residential section of Lake Forest on Sunday night, tossing a woman 75 feet through the air, tearing the roof off a house and damaging as many as 24 other homes as it uprooted trees and scattered debris over a 1 1/2-mile path in less than two minutes, authorities said.

The twister, accompanied by a furious rain, hopped in a northeasterly direction, touching down first near Ridge Route Drive and Muirlands Boulevard in Lake Forest. It flung boats out of a manmade lake off Superior Lane, then roared into an uninhabited commercial area in neighboring Irvine.

“We were eating our dinner and there was really a strong rain and all of a sudden it sounded like a train,” said Jon Tinsley, 44, of 21696 Superior Lane.

Throughout the Southland, the storm continued to take a heavy toll. Four bodies were found in a battered pickup truck Sunday that had been plucked from raging waters near Temecula in southern Riverside County, and an infant was missing in that accident Sunday night. Firefighters dramatically rescued an Agoura Hills teen-ager as floods continued to ravage the region, authorities said.

The victims who drowned in their pickup truck Saturday were trying to drive through a rain-swollen wash along a winding foothill road on the outskirts of Temecula, said Susan Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry.

The occupants of the truck were reportedly cautioned not to attempt the crossing.

The Lake Forest twister ripped a bedroom roof off Tinsley’s home about 6:45 p.m., and his garage caved in on top of his car and minivan. The high wind wedged a child’s tricycle into the rubble atop the caved-in garage roof.

Robin Conzelman, 21, was standing beside her car on Via Viajante when the tornado ripped past, tossing her into the air and throwing her onto another car about 75 feet away, said Kathleen Cha, spokeswoman for the Orange County Fire Department. Conzelman was not seriously injured but sought medical treatment on her own after being treated at the scene by paramedics.

It was the second tornado to touch down in Orange County in four days, coming on the heels of a twister that caused $200,000 damage in Buena Park as it hopscotched over 110 homes.

On Superior Lane, Tinsley said he went to the window and saw only a sheet of heavy rain just before the twister struck.

Small boats were ripped from their moorings in the manmade lake that is bordered by the affluent homes of Superior Lane and several other streets. Several boats were blown out of the water and others had huge holes knocked in them.

The trees that were left standing were stripped of leaves and branches by the fierce wind. Windows blew out with loud crashes and roofs shed shingles like confetti.

“When I came down Superior, it looked like downtown Baghdad,” said Roy Farmer, president of the Lake Forest Keys Homeowner Assn.

Streets near the commercial area of Irvine Boulevard and the James A. Musick Branch Jail were scattered with uprooted vegetation and sheet metal, apparently ripped from the buildings just west of the affected homes in Lake Forest, Irvine Police Sgt. Leo Jones said.

The Orange County Fire and Sheriff’s departments set up a joint command post at Calle Entrada and Bake Parkway, on the border of the two cities. Homeowners reported trees uprooted, windows shattered and other debris strewn in the neighborhoods near SuperiorLane, where the twister apparently touched down.

With a lull in the rain after the tornado had passed, crowds of neighbors prowled streets as county work crews with chain saws cleared away countless trees and swept stacks of debris.

Six engine companies from the Orange County Fire Department, 50 firefighters in all, responded to the path of the twister and were expected to work long into the night in cleaning up, assessing damage and checking for gas leaks.

The twister was just the latest devastating punch of two weeks of relentless rain that finally is expected to subside, for a while at least, on Tuesday. However, another one to three inches of rain is expected to fall today.

For the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Sunday, San Juan Capistrano recorded 1.68 inches of rain, while Anaheim had .32, Santa Ana .53, El Toro .61 and Newport Beach .65.

From the coast to the mountains, Orange County residents tried Sunday to dig themselves out of thick mud and runoff after almost two weeks of near-constant battering from storms.

Mudslides forced several families out of their homes in Modjeska Canyon and a warehouse in San Clemente was teetering Sunday night on the edge of a channel that had been blasted apart by Saturday’s torrential flow.

Emergency workers scrambled Sunday to shore up a severely damaged storm-water channel to ensure that the warehouse hovering on its edge didn’t fall in. A four-foot wall of storm water rushed down the channel on Saturday afternoon, crashing into a restaurant and hotel near the shoreline.

The Red Cross on Sunday afternoon sent teams into Modjeska Canyon to assess the damage, and opened a shelter at Portola Hills Elementary School in Mission Viejo for families left homeless, said Judy Iannaccone, a Red Cross spokeswomen.

Modjeska Canyon, an isolated, vulnerable area in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, was hit with continuing mud and rockslides after the hillsides were saturated with runoff from the mountains. The slides damaged at least three houses along Modjeska Canyon Road.

Gene Granata, 33, a computer software salesman, his wife, Debra, 34, and 1 1/2-year-old daughter Megan were spending their first weekend in their house in the canyon. They are scheduled to sign their loan documents today for the 60-year-old, 900-square-foot house they are buying for about $200,000.

By Sunday, the Granatas’ house, perched on soil saturated by mountain runoff, had slipped four feet down, and several neighboring homes were also damaged by debris and mud.

The Granatas moved to Modjeska from Moreno Valley to escape traffic congestion, and they had mistakenly thought the hillside was stable because of dense vegetation there.

On Saturday night, they saw two neighboring houses start to slide, so they spent the night in a hotel. By Sunday morning it was their own home that had started to slide downhill.

“Now we’re trying to decide whether our house is too dangerous to live in,” Gene Granata said.

The houses, he said, appeared to be squeezed like an accordion. “People were begging for sandbags when we left,” he said.

In San Clemente Saturday, the Holiday Beach Motel on El Camino Real was destroyed, Ernesto’s Italian Villa Restaurant next door was flooded and employees of a nearby real-estate office were forced to climb up on the roof to escape the water. No injuries were reported.

The San Clemente channel, known as Segunda Deshecha, was so severely torn up that it ranks as the worst damage to the county’s flood-control system in at least 10 years, said Bill Reiter, manager of the county’s storm center.

The raging water ripped concrete off a 300-foot portion of the channel, with repair costs estimated at $4 million.

“We sustained heavy damage upstream. The water was so high and ferocious it ripped out the concrete lining,” Reiter said.

A county-hired contractor with about a dozen trucks and several tractors used rocks to shore up the damaged slopes. Also, 50 youths from the Conservation Corps were out sandbagging along the channel until dark Sunday.

“We’re trying to keep the rest of the wall from coming out,” said supervisor Calvin Reed. “We need to keep the water flowing down the channel. If more of the wall breaks, there would be big trouble.”

The ground underneath the 1,400-square-foot warehouse, which contained old furniture, had severely eroded along the damaged channel.

A short distance away, dozens of local residents, many carrying cameras, streamed by Ernesto’s Italian Villa on North El Camino Real, to see the devastation caused to the popular eatery when the channel suddenly overflowed Saturday.

The restaurant’s 80-year-old owner, Jennie Genovese, was inside the restaurant along with her son Don and an employee when the water roared through. All escaped without injury, although a family dog was swept away into the ocean.

“Everything just happened so fast,” Don Genovese said. “Within a minute, the restaurant was a disaster. It was like a flash flood. It was amazing that we were able to get out.”

Crews also worked to shore up a crumbling wall at the Palm Beach Mobile Home Park in San Clemente.

“We’ve got a lot of slippage throughout the town. The hills are getting so saturated that there’s nothing you can really do. The downpour yesterday was just too much,” said San Clemente police Lt. Bill Trudeau.

A Costa Mesa family was left homeless from flooding there, and received temporary shelter by the Red Cross. Two units were damaged at The Riviera, a time-share building in San Juan Capistrano where about 30 people were evacuated, according to the Orange County Fire Department.

The heavy rain and flooding even forced the Marines to close Camp Pendleton. All but one gate was closed at the base, where some areas were under 10 feet of water and residents of a mobile home park were evacuated.

Marine Corps officials warned the 35,000 residents on the base that water wells may be contaminated. They were told to drink bottled water or boil tap water before consuming it.

Roads throughout vulnerable areas of the county, such as Dana Point, Silverado Canyon, Trabuco Canyon and Huntington Beach, remained closed Sunday. Coast Highway remained closed in southern Dana Point, where officials fear mudslides are undermining homes there. Pacific Coast Highway, however, was reopened in Huntington Beach between Warner Avenue and Golden West Street.

Also closed are some roads in southern Costa Mesa, canyon roads in eastern Orange County--Santiago Canyon Road, Silverado Canyon Road and Live Oak Canyon Road--as well as Ortega Highway, Laguna Canyon Road between the San Diego Freeway and El Toro Road and Santa Ana Canyon Road.

On Saturday, one of the worst days of the continuing storms, the Orange County Fire Department was deluged with 212 calls, about half of which were storm-related. Included were 27 calls about flooding, 33 traffic collisions and 13 responses to mudslides.

Rescue workers warned people to stay off their roofs, even if they suspect storm damage, because of slippery conditions.

On Saturday afternoon, a 34-year-old man helping his neighbor patch a roof at 9361 England St. in Westminster slipped off, falling 20 feet onto his back on a swimming pool diving board, said Westminster Fire Capt. Craig Campbell.

Brent Lewallen, who suffered a head injury, broken back and fractured ankle, was in stable condition Sunday at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center.

Anyone needing emergency help or shelter during the storms can call the Orange County Chapter of the Red Cross at (714) 835-5381.

Assistance with flood damage is available to the public by calling the county’s Emergency Operations Center at (714) 834-2331 or the storm center at (714) 567-6300. Rescue workers ask people not to call 911 unless it’s an emergency.

Times staff writers Len Hall and Otto Strong and correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this report.

* FLOOD CONTROL WORKING: O.C.’s system is holding up, with one exception. A29

Flooded Streets

Roads were closed throughout Orange County because of the weekend rains, with some of them still not open to traffic late Sunday. The following routes were closed Sunday and may be closed to traffic today:

1) Eastbound Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue was closed Saturday, remained closed Sunday.

2) The south end of Costa Mesa was flooded, with numerous blocked streets including southbound 19th Street and eastbound Santa Ana Avenue.

3) The entire stretch of Ortega Highway from San Juan Capistrano to Riverside County’s Lake Elsinore was closed due to flooding.

4) Santiago Canyon Road was open to Santiago Canyon residents only.

5) Laguna Canyon Road was closed between El Toro Road and the San Diego Freeway.

6) Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim was closed between Weir Canyon and Gypsum Canyon roads due to mudslides.

7) Southbound Coast Highway in Dana Point from Camino Capistrano to Palisades Drive was closed due to flooding.

8) One lane of northbound Coast Highway in the El Moro Beach area, between Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, was closed due to flooding.