No Injuries from Wind Despite Blackouts, Property Damage

Crews worked to clean up the damage across the southland, including at this home in Altadena with extensive damage.
Photos by Roman INGUANZO

By Justin HAGER 

Powerful winds ripped throughout the southland, creating havoc for residents and businesses.

Much of the region spent the weekend without power after strong Santa Ana winds downed trees, and power lines, causing blackouts and damage to vehicles and homes. While the Verdugo mountains provided significant protection for much of the Crescenta Cañada Valley, gusts of more than 80 mph were reported in multiple locations around the area, including 90 mph at the Magic Mountain Truck Trail, 83 mph at Henniger Flats near Altadena, and 89 mph at the Mt. Lukens Truck Trail, according to the National Weather Service in Oxnard. The unyielding winds were not unique to Southern California; the San Francisco Bay area experienced gusts of more than 80 mph and the Kirkwood/Sierra Nevada weather station near Lake Tahoe recorded a gust of 141 mph.

Even as downed trees were cleared from the middle of the road, streets across the foothill communities will continue to show for weeks to come signs of the wind damage.

Pasadena and Altadena reported some of the first outages as early as 8 p.m. on Friday. At the peak of the blackouts, more than 70,000 people, including several thousand in Pasadena, Altadena, and La Cañada Flintridge, were without power due to more than 100 separate outages, according to Southern California Edison’s outage tracker. Power was restored to most of the area around 10 p.m. Saturday night, a little more than 24 hours after the blackouts began. But more than 22,000 customers in Los Angeles County were still without power through the entirety of the weekend, including more than 1,000 residents of La Cañada Flintridge, South Pasadena, Claremont, Monrovia, West Covina and San Marino who were not expected to see power return until at least Wednesday.

One downed tree left a chasm in the roof and second story of this house in Altadena.

For some local residents, getting their power back on was not their only concern. CV Weekly photographer Roman Inguanzo was fortunate that the only damage done to his family home in Altadena was the collapse of a fence. A neighbor less than one block away awoke Saturday morning to find a large tree resting on the roof their home, shattering roofing tiles and destroying their carport, with a branch making a new home in the roof of their sedan. Another home in the neighborhood fared even worse after a large tree sliced a cavernous hole into their top floor.

High winds toppled trees more than two feet in diameter over the weekend.

Further east on the 210 Freeway in Claremont, the damage was even more severe. Dozens of homes and vehicles were damaged as countless trees toppled. Among the victims of the wind were a coastal oak at Memorial Park that is used to host the city’s annual veterans day commemoration; one of the last remaining eucalyptus trees that was part of a group of eucalyptus trees planted on College Street by city founder Frank P. Brackett in 1898; and almost every large tree in Jaeger Park.

Despite the property damage, no injuries had been reported to the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. in the CV Weekly readership area as a result of the wind as of press time.