A major windstorm blew into Southern California on Friday, causing a chain-reaction crash on the road to Las Vegas that killed two people, downing scores of trees and utility lines and leaving more than 100,000 homes without power.
Late Friday, wind gusts of 62 mph were reported in the Malibu hills and 38 mph in the Newhall Pass. Utility officials said power outages continued throughout the evening and at one point they were unable to verify all the locations affected.
Weather forecasters said the windstorm, which was expected to continue through today, was among the fiercest they've seen in years, with gusts of more than 80 mph in mountain passes and more than 40 mph at UCLA, Pasadena and other places.
The California Highway Patrol said a severe wind and dust storm near Barstow caused a crash in which a minivan hit a tour bus, killing a 56-year-old Erlinda Flores of Lake Elsinore and her 13-year-old grandson, Sean Rankin, in the van and leaving others with severe injuries.
Officials said the accident, which also involved two other vehicles, occurred about 9:40 a.m. as a dust storm from the desert reduced visibility to nearly zero on Interstate 15.
California Highway Patrol Sgt. Jeff Arnswald passed through the area shortly before the crash and later responded to the accident.
"When I came through [after the crash], the visibility was nonexistent. There was just sand everywhere," Arnswald said. "I had been there just 20 minutes earlier, and there was no sand and everything was clear."
The dust storms prompted some Las Vegas-bound drivers to pull off the road.
"We are trying to get to Vegas, but the car started swaying pretty bad on the freeway," said Jason Finnegan, 47, of Temecula, waiting out the weather at a Yermo diner. "This is really as bad as I've seen it out here."
Across the Southland, residents woke up Friday to stacks of palm fronds on the ground, downed trees and other debris. The wind hobbled the morning commute, as the Grapevine was jammed because of wind and icy conditions and several big-rigs toppled or jackknifed on freeways across the region.
"No alarms, you can't cook and you have a screaming kid because you have no TV," complained Carlos Alvarado, 43, about the wind that knocked out power to his Los Feliz home. "We had cold cereal. The milk wasn't warm yet. All the phones were out, but luckily we had our cellphones."
Others took the weather in stride.
