Rare tornado rips through Los Angeles County, injuring 1 and tearing off roof

A tornado tore through a Southern California community on Wednesday, injuring one person and damaging structures. 

The National Weather Service Office in Los Angeles said that the rare twister was an EF1, a measurement on the Enhanced Fujita Scale that indicates it had winds of 86 to 110 mph. 

It touched down shortly before 11:15 a.m. PT in Montebello, and was the strongest tornado to hit the Los Angeles metropolitan area since March 1983. 

The agency said its path was 50 yards wide and that it was on the ground for two to three minutes. 

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Alex Gillman, a spokesman for the city, said one person was hurt and taken to the hospital. He did not know the severity of the injury.

The National Weather Service said 17 structures were damaged, with 11 significantly impacted and red-tagged as uninhabitable.

A tree was uprooted and a power pole was snapped with the transformer ripped off. 

The tornado primarily ripped through an industrial warehouse and commercial business district.

Cars there were damaged and a near-total roof collapse occurred in one building. Warehouse roofing material collapsed and an HVAC unit was ejected from the top of the building. Skylights were broken and wood cross beams came down. 

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“It got very loud. Things were flying all over the place,” Michael Turner, who noticed the lights were flickering and brought the employees of his 33,000-square-foot warehouse inside, told The Associated Press. “The whole factory became a big dustbowl for a minute. Then when the dust settled, the place was just a mess.”

Nobody was hurt, but the gas line was severed, the fire sprinklers broke and a 5,000-square-foot section of the roof was “just gone.” 

Turner said his polyester fiber business, Turner Fiberfill, could be closed for months.

Five deaths were attributed to the state’s 12th atmospheric river storm since late December.

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The National Weather Service also sent assessment teams to Carpinteria, where it confirmed that a tornado hit a mobile home park on Tuesday, damaging about 25 residents. That tornado was a relatively weak EF0.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.