Wailing Winds Fell Wires, Trees in O.C.

Winds gusting to 77 mph huffed and roared through Southern California on Monday, killing one man, flipping big rigs like toys, felling trees including a venerable Orange County oak and tormenting sleepless residents with an overnight onslaught.

The high winds, produced by an unusual collision of whirling pressure systems, prompted authorities to close two key freeways--a 20-mile stretch of Interstate 15 through the Inland Empire and 128 miles of Interstate 10 from Indio to the Arizona border. They also created an odd air of chaos across the region--revealing gorgeous mountain views even as motorists dodged flying debris and discarded Christmas trees skittered like tumbleweeds.

“It’s like one big sandstorm,” said CHP Officer Tami Low. “Wear goggles. It’s pretty bad. . . . We haven’t had anything this bad in a long time.”

In a rare move, authorities recommended that campers and big rigs stay off the freeways--a precaution usually limited to canyons and mountain passes. At least nine big-rig trucks were reported overturned on Interstate 15 and five more had flipped on Interstate 10, which was reopened by early evening, the CHP reported. No one was injured seriously, but officials said the wind was hindering efforts to right the trucks.

A 56-year-old Los Angeles man, whose name was not released pending notification of his family, was fatally crushed by a falling tree, Los Angeles police reported.

The man was standing with a friend in an open field in Sunland about 9 a.m. when the tree, more than 60 feet high, fell on him, authorities said. He died several hours later at a hospital of massive internal and external injuries.

About 280,000 homes and businesses were at least temporarily without electricity, including more than 12,000 in Orange County. By late afternoon, more than 50,000 remained without power, many of their residents facing a chill winter evening without heat. Many other residents had to do without telephone service.

In Trabuco Canyon, the winds toppled a 50-foot-tall, 400-year-old California live oak in O’Neill Regional Park, blocking the entrance to the county park and leaving rangers grieving.

“We lost a lot of trees [Monday] but none was as heartbreaking as that one,” said Dan Scharton, the groundskeeper at the park.

“It’s just down on the ground, blocking the entrance like some giant wounded bird,” Scharton said.

No serious injuries were reported in the park, or anywhere else in the county, though the pilot of an advertising blimp that ventured into Dana Point on Monday morning had a close call.

The Dana Point Harbor Patrol was unable to make contact with the pilot.

“For quite a while there, he [the pilot of the blimp] appeared to be losing control,” said patrol Sgt. Howard Mol. “He would take a substantial dive, then stabilize. Finally, he seemed to get it together and headed toward Camp Pendleton.”

Soon after that, the blimp experienced difficulty near Oceanside, where Bill Curtis, a member of the lifeguard station crew, said the craft dipped to within 50 feet of the water.

Within minutes, the blimp righted itself and managed a slow flight to the Mexican border, where it landed successfully at Brown Field, according to Gabriel Sanchez, the airstrip’s operations officer.

The winds made a noisome, sleep-robbing mess in many neighborhoods.

Ryan McKay, 22, of Mission Viejo said the gusts woke him up early on his day off by ripping the roof off his backyard gazebo.

“When the roof flies 10 feet in the air and comes down in the corner of your backyard, you know it,” McKay said.

Teresa Somma of Lake Forest said the winds made it difficult even to get around.

“Trees were down in the street. I had to take a different route to my baby-sitter’s house. Our power was going on and off all day--it’s crazy.”

Janelle James of Mission Viejo arose in the wee hours of Monday morning to move her 9-year-old daughter into a bedroom near the back of the house, far from the front-facing window under which she usually sleeps.

“It was kicking up all night,” James said of the wind. “It howled, and you’d think that any minute something would come crashing down.”

In fact, several things did. A huge branch snapped off a tree in the family’s front yard, blocking the sidewalk and narrowly missing a neighbor’s car. Christmas decorations were ripped off the house and its shrubbery. A backyard patio umbrella ended up in the pool, and part of the back fence came tumbling down.

“It kept me awake until 3 a.m.,” James said. “The windows were shaking and the wind made that moaning kind of eerie, creepy howl.”

About the time James was finally getting to sleep, Alice Horan, of Mission Viejo, was being jolted awake.

“It was horrible,” she said. “There are garbage cans all over the place, we lost two eucalyptus trees, part of our fence went down.”

Monday’s winds--which reached 55 mph throughout most of the county, higher in the inland canyons--forced the closure of Doheny State Beach near Dana Point and interrupted power to 12,000 customers throughout South County, according to spokesmen for San Diego Gas & Electric.

“We’ve had tree branches blowing into our lines all over the place,” said SDG&E; spokesman Ed Van Herik, who said power outages hit San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Niguel and parts of Camp Pendleton for much of the morning and afternoon.

Southern California Edison, which serves primarily northern Orange County, reported 255 customers rendered powerless for parts of the day.

Officials for the California Highway Patrol said fallen eucalyptus trees littered parking lots of shopping centers throughout South County.

The proprietor of the Cook’s Corner restaurant at the gateway to Silverado and Modjeska canyons reported high winds sending a tangle of tree limbs and branches falling from the sky like chunks of wooden hail but somehow leaving most of the nearby property intact.

In Lake Forest, westbound traffic along El Toro Road was stopped between Santa Margarita Parkway and Marguerite Parkway while road crews removed a fallen eucalyptus tree. Muirlands Boulevard had to be closed between Troy Street and La Paz Road after another tree fell, blocking traffic in both directions.

“A lot of trees are down everywhere,” said Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Ron Wilkerson. “We’re getting lots of calls.”

Caltrans officials reported signs being blown over on freeway shoulder lanes, and the Sheriff’s Department recorded an inordinate number of false alarms from home burglar-alarm systems.

“It happens every time we have high winds,” Wilkerson said. “The wind will shake the doors and windows to the point that it will activate the alarm.”

Orange County residents can expect winds to die down today, after a night of gusts between 55 and 75 mph, according to forecaster Jon Erdman of WeatherData, Inc., a Wichita, Kan.-based service that provides weather information to The Times.

“You can expect winds of no more than 20 mph” by late this afternoon, Erdman said.

Winds were so strong in parts of the Inland Empire that entire rows of utility poles were blown out of the ground and fallen power lines were suspected as the cause of a fire that caused about $100,000 damage at an Arcadia apartment complex.

Tumbling trees and limbs also damaged homes throughout the region.

A year-old baby escaped injury when the crib in which she was sleeping was partly crushed beneath a pine tree that crashed through the roof of the family’s Altadena apartment.

A home under construction for abused teenagers in Altadena went down “like a house of cards,” said staffer Elise Dorsey, who watched it tumble.

In San Fernando, residents said the damage caused by falling trees resembled what they saw after the 1994 earthquake. Drivers in Arcadia and Van Nuys suffered minor injuries when trees fell on their vehicles.

For 5,400 employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, where an uprooted tree fell across the main steps of the administration building, the winds spelled a day off. Officials sent workers home early to avoid mishaps. It was the first time in memory that the facility, which is run by Caltech for NASA’s space program, has been closed by weather.

Times staff writers Angie Chuang, John Gonzales, Larry Gordon, Michael Granberry, David Haldane, Peter Y. Hong, Solomon Moore, Bob Pool, Frank B. Williams, Martha Willman and correspondent Mayrav Saar contributed to this story.