Winds Blamed in 2 Deaths; Power Lines, Trees Fall

Last week, the rains. This week, the winds.

Santa Ana winds scoured the Southland from the low desert to the Channel Islands, killing two men and sending power lines crashing, trucks toppling and dust, sand, tumbleweeds and shingles flying.

Gusts of up to 90 mph were blamed for the deaths of a man in a van hit by a tree in Lake View Terrace and another man who was electrocuted by a downed power line in Fontana. Homes in Rialto and Fontana were damaged by falling trees and flying street signs, while boats in Channel Island Harbor were pounded by waves pushed by 85-mph winds.

“I’ve lived here for 33 years and I don’t recall it being this bad,” said Yvonne Beach of Chatsworth, as she nervously eyed a lurching pine tree looming above her bedroom. “It feels like I’m going to be blown away.”

The winds, which began gusting midday Saturday, were expected to weaken by today, but linger through midweek. In their wake, the Santa Anas will leave their usual calling card: dozens of snapped power lines and uprooted trees, which demonstrate that a windstorm can turn deadly even without a fire to spread.

One of the storm’s fatalities occurred when a branch snapped off a pine tree in Lake View Terrace on Saturday night and fell onto a minivan at Cranston and Eldridge avenues, breaking the neck of Carlos Lopez, 82, of Sylmar, killing him instantly. His daughter-in-law, Alicia Lopez, 36, had to be cut out of the vehicle by firefighters, and was taken to a nearby hospital where she was treated and released.

In Fontana, 28-year-old Carlos Jones was killed about 8:45 p.m. Saturday as he shoveled dirt on a downed power line to extinguish a small electrical fire. A gust of wind lifted the cable and wound it around Jones, electrocuting him, Fontana police said.

About 130,000 buildings lost electricity for some period during the storm, as power lines from Oxnard to Rancho Cucamonga “just snapped like matchsticks,” said Southern California Edison spokeswoman Millie Paul.

“When there’s a windstorm like this,” Paul said, “it can cause a lot of havoc.”

Most of the power outages were in western San Bernardino County and Ventura County, where gusts neared 90 mph. Uprooted eucalyptus trees draped over the lines hampered repairs Sunday, when 130 Southern California Edison crews converged in western San Bernardino County, the hardest-hit region.

In the San Fernando Valley, about 4,000 customers lost power. “What happens is we restore power, and as the winds pick up, other areas are affected,” said Valerie Roberts Gray, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “It’s a constant back and forth with us being able to get ahead of the winds and having the power restored.”

A toppled tree brought down power lines north of Moorpark on Sunday morning, forcing the closure of a mountainous stretch of California 23 connecting the city with the town of Fillmore and California 126 in the Santa Clara Valley.

California Highway Patrol officers closed Grimes Canyon Road, a narrow, winding section of California 23 traversing Oak Ridge Mountain, to traffic in both directions about 7 a.m. It was unclear how long the road would remain closed.

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In Port Hueneme, sparks from power lines brought down by the high winds ignited several palm trees on the south side of Bard Road at Fifth Street late Saturday night, damaging five homes.

Two police officers, Daniel Morgan and Romeo Alvarez, were trapped in a backyard by blowing embers from one blaze as they tried to alert a resident whose windows and doors were blocked by security bars. The officers were treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation and released.

In the northern San Fernando Valley, gusts reached up to 60 mph.

A frustrated Greg Reyes, in Chatsworth to visit his brother, cut short an afternoon jog because of the gusts. Said Reyes, who lives in the Philippines: “This is like a typhoon without the rain.”

The Santa Anas occur every fall and winter, often leaving angst in their wake.

Best known as the engine behind the Southland’s most spectacular fires, the hot, dry Santa Anas bring subtler woes, stirring up allergens, drying out eyes and jangling nerves. Essayist Joan Didion described Santa Ana time as “the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread.” When the winds blow, wrote Raymond Chandler in perhaps the most quoted description of the Santa Ana, “every booze party ends in a fight [and] meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.”

The regional misery is caused by a devilish squeeze between a high pressure zone over the Rockies and a low pressure zone off the Pacific Coast. As the air moves west, it dries out and becomes compressed by the mountains ringing the Southland. The winds then blast through mountain passes and canyons and howl across the L.A. Basin from a northeasterly direction.

The gusts become exceptionally fierce when, as happened Saturday night, winds at higher altitudes parallel their course. On Saturday, for example, winds at up to 12,000 feet were also blowing northeast to southwest, said Curtis Brack of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

“They were all lined up and all wanted to go in the same direction,” he said.

Brack predicted that winds will die down to 15 to 30 mph, with gusts of up to 50 mph in some canyons, by today and continue to peter out during the week. Early Sunday, they howled at a steady 90 mph in Fremont Canyon north of the city of Santa Ana, with gusts in the low 90s in San Bernardino County.

The gusts were responsible for overturning a tractor trailer on the transition road between the 15 and 215 freeways in the Cajon Pass about 8:30 a.m., the CHP reported. In Chatsworth, a truck hauling flowers toppled 100 feet over the side of the Simi Valley Freeway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, and the driver suffered minor injuries.

In Chatsworth, a power line clipped by a falling pine tree sparked a blaze Sunday morning in a side yard of a home in the 22500 block of the quiet suburban street. As the fire smoldered outside, firefighters rushed into the house.

There was no one inside--just three rooms full of 440 marijuana plants, LAPD Lt. Bernie Larralde said.

The $250,000 worth of high-quality, harvestable pot and accompanying growing equipment was not what anyone expected in the gated, ranch-style home.

“We get a lot of pornographers living up here,” said one neighbor, “but not this.”

Times staff writer Timothy Williams and correspondents Sharon Moeser and Jason Terada contributed to this story.