Vote to Grade Anaheim Hilltops leaves Residents Fearful of Wind

When the Santa Ana winds begin to blow, residents along Mohler Drive and Canyon Rim Road in Anaheim Hills give thanks that they live behind a range of hills that provides a natural windbreak.

The windbreak is not going to be around much longer, however. A developer this week received approval from the Anaheim City Council to bulldoze as much as 120 feet off the hilltop to make way for 120 homes.

“I’m scared what will happen when these hills are cut back,” Mohler Drive resident Arminda Kinsman, 67, told the council this week. “I just feel that we have been shafted.”

At issue is whether the hills lying just northeast of Mohler Drive and Canyon Rim Road, where some 200 homes are located, do in fact provide a buffer from Santa Ana winds, which local residents have clocked at 70 miles per hour.

Frank Elfend, president of a Newport Beach consulting firm that was contracted by the developer, told the council this week that his studies show the normal Santa Ana wind flow in Anaheim Hills is from southwest to northeast -- away from the homes and toward the hills in question.

Residents who have lived atop a ridge on Mohler Drive--some for a quarter-century--would beg to differ.

“He’s crazy,” said Kinsman, who along with her husband, Ron, are 24-year residents of the neighborhood. “After 24 1/2 years, I should know.”

Santa Ana winds blow so fiercely from the east, Kinsman and other residents said they have lined the east-facing side of Mohler Drive with towering eucalyptus trees. Ruth Hood, 69, whose hillside home is directly across a canyon from one of the hilltops to be bulldozed, said that the hill has always acted as a buffer.

“All these hills buffer the wind,” Hood said Wednesday outside her home of 34 years. “I wouldn’t live on that hill (across the canyon) for nothing.”

The city earlier had given the developer, Presley of Southern California, approval to bulldoze the hills, but an appeal by a homeowner brought the matter back. Although residents criticized a wind study done by the developer when winds measured only 6 miles per hour, the council denied the appeal on a 4-1 vote. Grading is to begin immediately.

Residents Hood and Kinsman also lamented the loss of the pristine canyon and hills where they and their families have hiked over the years. Deer Canyon, situated between the Mohler Drive homes and the doomed hilltops, is crisscrossed with streams.

“Oh, this is so beautiful in the spring when it’s so green,” Kinsman said as the women hiked down a dusty canyon road lined with California live oaks. “It’s a shame they have to tear all this down.”

Their biggest concern, however, is their safety, residents said.

“When we have those winds, it’s not even safe to be outside,” Sally Smith, a resident of Canyon Rim Road, told the council. Gusts are strong enough to upturn heavy tables and send 10-pound sections of roof tile careening through the canyon. “To stand out there, you can be blown down.”

Elfend, at the meeting, did not try to dispute the fact that the neighborhood is occasionally buffeted by vicious Santa Ana winds.

“Everyone knows that when the Santa Ana winds blow, they blow,” Elfend said. “(But) they blow where I live, in Mission Viejo.”

Hilltop Dispute Residents have lost a battle to prevent the bulldozing of hilltops.