Storm Breaks the Heat With a Vengeance

A series of freakish lightning storms Wednesday ignited brush fires and disrupted electrical service while tornado-like winds toppled more than 12 power poles on busy Thousand Oaks Boulevard, trapping several people in their cars under a tangle of wires.

The incidents provided a grim respite from the area’s record-breaking triple-digit heat. Meteorologists blamed a blanket of hot air colliding with a wave of subtropical moisture from Hurricane Isis in the Gulf of California.

“We had all the necessary ingredients,” said Kevin Stenson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Downbursts of winds--intense gusts forced to the earth during a thunderstorm--snapped poles along a two-mile stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. All six lanes of the road between Westlake Boulevard and Duesenberg Drive were shut down as emergency crews cleared the wreckage.

A web of downed utility lines snared more than half a dozen motorists. A few sat in their cars, waiting for officials to give them the all-clear.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” said Thousand Oaks resident Patricia Bowman. Just a few feet in front of her teal Buick a ruptured pole shot sparks everywhere. A power line lay across her car.

A block away, Dolores Duran leaped from her Honda Accord after it was struck by a stray line. At a nearby car dealership, she called for help and tried to steady herself.

“I was just so nervous,” she said, wiping away tears. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

People who had welcomed the rain grew fearful as the winds suddenly picked up.

“It felt like a twister went through,” said John Akillian, manager of a McDonald’s on Thousand Oaks Boulevard. “It was incredible. People couldn’t get out.”

Car salesman Rick Robbins gazed out at the grotesque panorama from the office at Courtesy Chevrolet.

“The winds got enormous. All of the trees were bent over. All the lines were exploding,” he said. “It was total pandemonium.”

An Oklahoma native, Robbins said the storm resembled a Midwestern tornado.

Shirley Mainer said she had never seen anything like it.

“I saw the pole sagging down and a big blue explosion,” she said. “It lit up the whole sky.”

Authorities reported no injuries from the fallen power poles.

Rudy Gonzales, a regional manager for Southern California Edison, estimated that repairs would take 48 to 60 hours. About 230 businesses will be without power until the lines are restored.

In addition, about 38,000 Edison customers throughout the county incurred half-minute power interruptions about 3:30 p.m. Of 30,000 affected customers in the east county, 5,000 remained without power at 8 p.m. and of 8,000 inconvenienced customers in the west county, 2,300 were also without power Wednesday night.

Edison regional manager Mike Montoya said lightning struck several poles and transformers. He said some repairs could take until about 3 p.m. today.

“We never expected wind and rain to play into today’s activities,” Gonzales said. “It caught us off guard, actually. It’s tough to prepare for something like this.”

In Ventura, the damage was not nearly as severe.

About 70 residents of a nursing home at the Ventura Towne House were evacuated and taken to an adjacent facility after the rain forced an end to roof repairs there.

At Balboa Middle School, two 60-foot palm trees were hit by lightning and erupted in flames, but the fire spread no further.

On South Linden Street, lightning boomed like a cannon as it struck a palm tree outside Nathan Steele’s window. A passing truck driver knocked on the door with news of the blazing tree.

“It was raining burning fronds,” said Steele, 23.

Firefighters soon arrived to douse the tree and the ember-dotted roof.

At one point Wednesday afternoon, the Ventura County Fire Department fielded simultaneous reports of at least four storm-related fires, said Joe Luna, a department spokesman.

About 3:15 p.m., a bolt set off a blaze that burned about 25 acres of brush in the rugged hills that rise above east Ventura near Williams Canyon Road. Forty firefighters rushed to the scene, as well as a water-dumping airplane. None of the homes in the area were threatened, Luna said.

About the same time, firefighters were called to the Steffen Lane area outside Simi Valley. A fire caused by lightning burned about three acres of brush. A roof in the 2000 block of Waldo Avenue in Simi Valley was damaged in another fire.

Lightning also zapped two 66,000-volt Southern California Edison lines in Ojai, according to a spokesman for Southern California Edison. Stores in downtown Ventura were darkened for about 15 minutes. Lights flickered sporadically for hours.

A weather-driven accident shut two of the Ventura Freeway’s three northbound lanes for about an hour. California Highway Patrol Officer Dave Cockrill said two people were taken to hospitals after two cars slammed the freeway divider near Wendy Drive in Newbury Park.

Other crashes were reported on California 126 and California 118.

A 3-year-old boy was seriously injured about 6:15 p.m. at Channel Islands Boulevard and C Street in Oxnard when two cars collided in the rain, Oxnard fire officials said. The boy was transported to the Ventura County Medical Center. Four other people with less severe injuries were taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, paramedic Douglas Miser of Gold Coast Ambulance said.

Rain totals from the storm varied from .04 of an inch at several sites in the county to nearly 1 1/4 inch in the Upper Ojai.

It was the heaviest September rainfall in four years, said Dolores Taylor, a hydrologist for the Ventura County Flood Control District.

Though his farm received a small amount of rain, William Jenson of Simi Valley saw reason for gratitude.

“I was starting to get worried about my tomatoes,” he said. “All that heat was starting to get to them, but this should cool them down.”

Skies today are expected to remain cloudy, with highs in the upper 70s to mid 80s. There is a 20% chance of late-afternoon thunderstorms, according to the National Weather Service.

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Chawkins is a Times staff writer. Hamm is a Times Community News reporter. Times Community News reporters Holly J. Wolcott, Pamela J. Johnson, Jason Takenouchi and Massie Ritsch contributed to this story. Times staff writers Coll Metcalfe and Tina Dirmann also contributed to this story.

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County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department for the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. Wednesday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 0.04 34.24 13.00 Casitas Dam n/a 57.85 23.00 Casitas Rec. Center n/a 54.74 22.72 Fillmore 0.35 44.02 18.42 Matilija Dam 0.04 62.93 26.45 Moorpark 0.12 34.07 14.54 Ojai 0.08 47.49 21.13 Upper Ojai 1.22 54.49 23.27 Oxnard 0.04 36.17 14.33 Piru n/a 37.62 17.04 Port Hueneme 0.04 33.14 13.84 Santa Paula 0.08 40.70 17.20 Simi Valley 0.12 36.40 14.28 Thousand Oaks 0.08 32.75 15.19 Ventura Govt. Center 0.39 41.93 15.78

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