El Toro Road’s Detour Collapses, 20,000 Affected : Commuting: Work on main road apparently caused bypass to fail. Closure expected to be in effect at least until Sunday.

A 100-foot section of the El Toro Road detour collapsed Wednesday, shutting down the entire route to about 20,000 daily drivers until Sunday at the earliest.

The section sank about a foot between Marguerite Parkway and Glen Ranch Road just at the evening rush hour, closing the detour that was built after El Toro Road buckled in a severe rainstorm. Now both roads are closed.

City Engineer Loren Anderson said that heavy earthmovers working on El Toro Road below the two-lane detour apparently had weakened the detour. At 3 p.m., Anderson said, he inspected the road because of a report of a crack, which at that point was only a few feet long.

“We thought that (repair) work using heavy equipment may cause problems with the bypass,” Anderson said. “But we weren’t certain at that time.”

But by 5:30 p.m., the road’s condition had become dangerous, and both lanes of the bypass were closed.

The closure will affect an estimated 20,000 people who use El Toro Road every day, especially those living in the community of Portola Hills, Anderson said.

“We have a lot of angry residents,” Anderson said.

Road crews were expected to work until midnight Wednesday and then resume at 7 a.m. today and work continuously until the detour road can be reopened, Anderson said.

Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Rex Hatch said that deputies were dispatched to help reroute traffic from the area at both ends of the closure.

“That’s a major thoroughfare,” Hatch said. “We know that they have done repairs on that same area of road that collapsed during the heavy rains.”

Some local businesses said they already were noticing the effects of the closure Wednesday night.

“I think we can tell that business is down. There aren’t that many customers in the store right now,” said Tim Rellaford, a clerk at a nearby Ralphs store.

Rellaford said many of his friends living in Portola Hills, immediately north of the closure, have been waiting months for repairs on El Toro Road to be completed.

“And, now another closure?” he said.

Linda Bradway, an employee at a nearby Shell gasoline station, said the reverse was true there. The closure had caused a long line of cars in front of the station.

“The road cuts off where we are,” Bradway said. “If they go up El Toro where its closed, they just have to turn around. Traffic was backed up at least a half mile and people were telling me that to reach Portola Hills, that traffic was backed up into O’Neill (Regional) Park, which is an alternate route.”

El Toro Road, which was closed on March 11, is expected to reopen in six weeks.