Blast at O.C. Eatery Kills 1, Injures 5 : Tragedy: Explosion rips through popular Newport Beach restaurant before brunch crowd arrives.

Less than half an hour before hundreds of customers were expected for Sunday brunch at a popular Southwestern-style restaurant, a blast ripped out a corner of the building, killing a bartender and injuring five other workers.

Police believe a defective water heater is to blame for the 9:35 a.m. explosion at El Torito Grill in the upscale Fashion Island shopping center. The blast collapsed two walls and a quarter of the roof and transformed the kitchen and grill area of the restaurant into an enormous pile of pink stucco, wires and shattered wood.

It shook nearby buildings and pitched hunks of concrete into a hotel parking lot across the street.

“It was such a strong blast, I thought it was an earthquake,” said a dazed cook, Ezekiel Casillas of Costa Mesa, as he gazed at the crumbled building. “I just threw myself on the floor.”

“A big pot of black beans hit the cook in the back,” said Jose Macias of Costa Mesa, also a cook. “Things were going everywhere.”

Juan Betular, a waiter, said water pipes broke and water gushed through the restaurant.

“White ceiling material fell all over the place,” he said. “There was a crack in the bar and liquor bottles fell out.”

Authorities said the fatally injured bartender was Antonio De Santiago, 36, of Fullerton, the father of three. Officials said he was found lying in water with electrical cables on top of him, but they do not believe he was electrocuted.

“He took the brunt of the blast on his upper body,” said Newport Beach Fire Department Battalion Chief Ron Sutherland.

Five other restaurant employees--two busboys, a waiter, a bookkeeper and a cook--suffered minor to moderate injuries, ranging from scrapes to broken bones. A Newport Beach firefighter, Gary Gundersen, suffered heat exhaustion while at the scene.

All six were treated at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and released by late afternoon.

About 25 employees were inside the restaurant preparing to open at 10 a.m. for brunch when the explosion occurred, Sutherland said.

“We’re lucky it was 9:30 and not 12:30, when we would have had a lot of people in there,” Sutherland added.

Sutherland said the damage on the outside of the building is “only the tip of the iceberg. There are big wood rafters that split like toothpicks. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Pedro Gutierrez, 41, of Newport Beach, a busboy who was treated for a bruise and gash on his left leg, said the force of the blast threw him across a room. He was temporarily blinded by steam and smoke, Gutierrez said, but managed to see a light in the rubble, crawled toward it and stumbled into the street.

Gutierrez said he had noticed steam hissing from a pin-sized hole in a pipe in the restaurant’s boiler room. He asked a chef’s assistant about it, but when it seemed to diminish, he forgot about it. He was in an adjacent room 20 minutes later when the explosion occurred.

The jolt was so intense that employees from surrounding businesses likened it to a small earthquake.

“It just shook the whole building,” said Scott Terry, a bartender at the next-door Cheesecake Factory. From a window he saw debris from El Torito hurled high into the air by the force of the blast.

“Our bar glasses started falling and breaking. Then I looked out the window and saw the smoke and pieces of drywall flying. I yelled for the hostess to call 911.”

Terry said he and others ran to the collapsed structure to help in the rescue of injured employees. He said one of them, a cook, limped out in stocking feet.

“I helped him take off his socks, and his feet had these huge burn blisters,” Terry said. “He was laying there kind of shaken.”

The only noise inside the collapsed building was the sound of “water gushing everywhere,” Terry said.

“When you see something that close, something you only see on television, it was frightening. You realize it could happen to you.”

Some employees noted that heavy machinery lined the wall near where the explosion seemed to be centered. Some said they believed the blast was linked to the water heater. Only three minutes before the blast, manager Mauricio Franco had been summoned to examine water leaking from the heater, Sutherland said.

Employees reported that they did not smell gas until after the explosion, which led fire officials to believe that an underground gas leak was to blame. If a leak had occurred above ground, they said, people on the premises would most likely have smelled gas before the explosion occurred.

But Bob Perry, district manager for Southern California Gas Co., said workers dug under the street near the restaurant, cut off gas to the line that serves the restaurant, and conducted pressure tests. No leak was found, ruling out an underground gas leak as the cause of the blast, Perry said.

Officials said there was no history of gas line problems at El Torito Grill.

Newport Beach Deputy Fire Marshal Jim Upton said the cause of the explosion will not be known until investigators sift through the rubble.

“It may be several days before we know for sure,” he said.

Evelyn Hellwig of San Diego, who was staying at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club across the street, said the blast shook windows and set off alarms. “I thought we might have to get evacuated,” she said.

Michael Woodrow, manager of the California Pizza Kitchen about 100 yards from the scene, said he was preparing for Sunday’s opening when he noticed a rumbling from near his restaurant.

“It actually felt like a lot of rattling,” Woodrow said. “I looked out the window and told the employees to stay inside.”

The explosion did not delay the Pizza Kitchen’s opening, nor was gas service cut off to surrounding businesses following the incident. Jose Nieto, a food service worker at El Torito, said he was outside the restaurant when the explosion occurred. He ran in to pull people out, but the spraying water, dust and falling debris forced him to leave.

“I went in and the smell of gas was pretty bad,” Nieto said.

Victor Alcala, 35, a busboy at the restaurant, said he also was outside when the blast occurred.

“It took all of us by surprise,” he said. “More than anything, I was lucky.”

The Newport Beach restaurant is owned by El Torito Restaurants Inc., a nationwide chain.

Restaurant Enterprises Group Inc. of Irvine is the parent corporation of the chain and also owns Charley Browns, Coco’s and other restaurants, said Laura Jones, a manager at the El Torito Grill in Costa Mesa.

Disheveled employees gathered across the street after the blast and Executive General Manager Marshall G. Wade Jr. told them the company would try to find jobs for the 150 workers at other El Torito restaurants or pay them for four to five weeks, while the restaurant is closed.

Times staff writers Gebe Martinez and Kevin Johnson contributed to this report.