Anaheim Sweeps Up Storm’s Aftermath

To roofer Greg Premo, perched atop a factory on South Rose Street, the scene was “like out of a movie, you know, the one with Dorothy.” But to the residents and business owners of the weather-torn Anaheim neighborhood, the damage wrought by Sunday’s storm wasn’t make-believe.

As they put their neighborhood back together Monday morning, the air resounded with the clatter of their cleanup: the clang of debris tossed from ravaged roofs into nearby Dumpsters, brooms brushing away wind-tossed trash and the whine of chain saws cutting fallen tree limbs.

Many who work in the small industrial park had arrived there before the sun rose to get their businesses in order. And by late morning they were marveling as much about what the storm did not do as they were about the actual damage.

At 5:30 a.m. Sunday, gale-force winds had whipped through a four-block area of Rose Street between Santa Ana and East streets, smashing in metal factory doors, ripping out chunks of roofs and shattering rows of windows.

Although residents were calling the storm a tornado, meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Los Angeles said Monday that the brief but fierce wind and rainstorm was more likely a “micro-burst”--random, gusting winds that often blow out of storm clouds.

“Investigation found no evidence of twisting motion,” meteorologist Peter Wilensky said Monday afternoon. “The damage was probably caused by a local very strong wind, possibly a ‘micro-burst.’ ”

According to Wilensky, satellite pictures and radar reports showed no “strong thunderstorm cells.” If there were such disturbances, “the possibility that there was a tornado is more likely. Without it, it was probably a micro-burst situation.”

The storm left more hole than roof at Reliable Bumper Services on South Rose. Owner Dennie Dyer said workers arrived at 4 a.m. Monday to clean up and didn’t finish pumping out the accumulated rainwater until about 9 a.m.

“(The roof is) only half gone, but the whole roof was damaged,” Dyer said. “We’ll have to remove the whole thing.” Dyer estimated his damages are about $100,000. Production, he said, was “down like to nothing.”

At Today’s Paint and Body Centers, next door to Dyer’s operation, the damage was minimal by comparison, and most of the cleanup had been finished by Sunday night.

“Tornadoes just have a way of touching down where they want to touch down,” said Larry Reeder, owner of the company. “We were lucky. . . . It blew our doors open and bent one. It lifted the roof.

“We’ll have to repair a couple of cars. The wind turbines were torn off (the roof), and water dripped down on the cars, but it’s not going to slow our production at all.” Reeder estimated his damages to be between $10,000 and $15,000.

Tony Fieri, owner of Anaheim Plastics Inc., was even more amazed at the storm’s caprice. His factory consists of several buildings in one small complex; most were damaged in some way, but one was left untouched.

“We’ve done most of it (cleanup) yesterday,” Fieri said, as water dripped from an 8-foot-by-20-foot hole in his roof. “It was a real mess. . . . This (part of the roof) was all lifted, the beam was lifted and fell in, breaking a sprinkler pipe.”

When Fieri arrived at work at 7:30 a.m. Monday, workers were cleaning up, and by noon they had swept the last piles of debris out of the main building. Production is still down between 80% and 90%, he said, and the storm did between $80,000 and $120,000 in damage.

Maria de la Paz didn’t care what experts called the storm. Tornado or micro-burst, it tore a tree from her South East Street yard early Sunday, knocking it on top of a small Chevrolet.

After three hours of cleaning up Monday, De la Paz stopped momentarily to point out her home’s damage to construction workers and reporters.

“The windows were broken and the screen door. The windows in the back were blown out. And these pieces,” she said, pointing to the rubble, “came from the roof and are the ones that broke the windows. It was pretty bad.”