Valley Begins Cleanup After Fierce Windstorm

A weekend of hurricane-force winds burdened much of the San Fernando Valley with a mammoth cleanup job Monday, dealing with trees that crashed onto streets and sidewalks, yards littered with wind-borne debris, shattered brick walls and severed electric and cable TV links.

“A hurricane without the water,” one Chatsworth woman called it.

The Los Angeles Department of Public Works said more than 600 trees had been blown down in the storms Saturday and Sunday, which were blamed for the deaths of two men. Wind gusts hit 90 mph, the National Weather Service reported.

Although no overall estimate of damage was available, local insurance offices were busy fielding calls from policyholders who sustained wind damage to cars and homes.

Gary Johnson, a partner at the Greenspan Co., a local loss adjuster, said his phone has been ringing constantly. “We’ve been pretty busy with calls from all over the Valley,” he said. “A lot of it is roofs blown off and power lines down that started fires.”

Alex Rodriguez, an Allstate Insurance agent in Northridge, said his office got 15 to 20 calls, “extensively more than [in] past weather situations.” Many callers were “checking to see what their deductible is, to see if it falls above or below their claim,” Rodriguez said.

Carolyn Ostic, manager of a State Farm office in Northridge, said her agency received 25 to 30 calls from policyholders on Monday and predicted “we’re going to hear [from] a lot more” in the next few days.

“This was a pretty good windstorm,” Ostic said. “I think this is just touching the tip of it.”

The Department of Building and Safety in Van Nuys took about “half a dozen calls” Monday morning from residents concerned about fallen fences and trees, said building inspector Hal Talley.

He said that when it was found that the wind toppled fences that the law requires, such as those around swimming pools, inspectors ordered homeowners to make immediate repairs.

A DWP spokeswoman said the windstorm cut power to about 6,600 customers in the Valley on Saturday and about 2,000 on Sunday, with the outages lasting upward of four hours in some cases. On Monday things were mostly back to normal.

“Right now we’re looking at the quiet after the storm,” she said.

Phil Klein, vice president for operations with Chatsworth-based CVI Cablevision Industries, said between 1,000 and 1,500 customers went without cable service for a short time over the weekend.

For about 48 hours beginning Saturday morning, city street tree maintenance crews were busy around the clock responding to emergency calls from Valley residents whose driveways or streets had been blocked by falling trees.

Some 600 downed trees were cleared away just by city crews, said Chuck Ellis, a spokesman for the Public Works Department.

Ellis said the 186 members of the department’s street tree division worked 14- to 16-hour shifts, going home for brief naps before resuming work. The department is “really pleased with the response time and proud of our people,” he said.

Ellis said the agency is particularly pleased that there were no serious injuries among the workers, noting that chain-saw accidents and other mishaps tend to occur when tree crews have to work exhaustively long shifts.

“This was a big one,” Ellis said, calling the windstorm a 20-year event in parts of the Valley--meaning a storm of such severity that it would be likely to occur an average of only once every two decades.

The storms were blamed for the deaths of a man whose van was struck by a falling tree limb in Lake View Terrace and another electrocuted by a fallen power line in Fontana.

“We got pummeled,” said Chatsworth resident Erica Smith, who Saturday watched the wind rip a brick-and-wrought-iron wall from its base outside her home.

“Those winds carried a power that was humbling to me, like a hurricane without the water. It scared me worse than the earthquake, probably.”

But there were some wind victims whose sighs were deeper than the others.

At Santa’s Christmas Tree Village on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth, owner Jimmy Erhardt said the winds have cost him $1 million in losses, including $650,000 in Christmas trees now unsalable because “the wind makes the trees brittle and dry, and then they’re dangerous.”

Erhardt said the Topanga Canyon location was the delivery site to supply six other lots. With his “warehouse” destroyed, he said, it’s too late to get any more trees.

Haydon Landon, a partner in the venture, said the wind carried off the lot’s big tent. “It actually pulled the stakes out of the ground and blew the tent down the street,” he said. “We had six guys chasing it.”

On Saturday, Landon said, strong winds blew the roof off a nearby fruit stand, part of it crashing into a car parked nearby.

“The mother and the kids weren’t hurt, but they were screaming, going crazy,” he said. “The movie ‘Twister’ had nothing on that scene, let me tell you.”

Erhardt said he has no choice but to sell the trees for salvage.

“It’s sad,” said one woman who bought a $69 tree for $29. “It’s not much of a Christmas for this guy.”

Catherine Quinn of Chatsworth said Monday that she could still hear the furious bellow of the wind in her head.

“It’s still there, crashing, howling, lifting and carrying trees with it as it goes,” she said, surveying the damage left by four towering eucalyptus trees that crashed into the yard of her rented home near Topanga Canyon Boulevard, smashing garages and shearing off the side of a house on the property.

“This used to be like living in a state park, this property, but now it looks like a redwood forest after lumber season. The carcasses of trees are just everywhere.”

She showed visitors a 12-foot hole where the trunk of one of the big eucalyptuses once stood, and the side of one of the houses, now sheared in half.

Jim Lund, who rented the home, said he saw the first tree go down on Saturday and spent that night in a motel. When he returned Sunday, his house was squashed.

“There’s one good call I’ve made lately,” he said.”