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February 18, 2026 / 5:17 PM PST / CBS LA
Fullerton's ferocious winds toppled trees onto homes, cars and trucks, jolting neighbors awake early Wednesday morning.
Homeowners on West Ash Avenue said the latest storm brought constant rain, cut power in the neighborhood, and then took out the trees. Resident Michelle Wedge said she peeked out of her front window at around 1:45 a.m. after hearing her car alarm blaring outside. Through the darkness, she saw a 30-foot tree had fallen onto her car.
"I told my husband that there's a tree on my car," Wedge said. "He got up real fast and ran out the house."
Husband Tom Wedge said when he got outside, he saw three more fallen trees in his neighborhood, one of which punched through his neighbor Vicky Aguilar's roof. She said it narrowly missed her 16-year-old foster daughter.
"We are blessed," Aguilar said. "I'll tell you that nobody got hurt and that was all the damage it did, hopefully."
Another tree crushed Jesus De Anda's one street away on West Avenue.
"Walked out here at about 6:25 a.m. in the morning, saw this large tree blocking the street, and I thought, 'Oh no, that cannot be my truck.' And it was my truck," De Anda said.
Another massive, 40-foot pine tree fell early this morning into a Fullerton home about a half mile away.
"I was asleep," homeowner Rashad Sharif said. "I heard what sounded like wind building up, or a train, just kept building up for about five seconds, and all of a sudden there was a boom and the whole house shook."
Sharif said he normally would have been relaxing on his living room couch, right where the tree collapsed.
The city of Fullerton is accepting damage claims from residents. It's still tallying the number of trees taken down during the storm, but estimates that several dozen were toppled.
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