Lien release never recorded

my wife and i had a mortgage with norwest that was paid off via refinance in 2002. recently we applied for a home equity line of credit and during the title search it was found that the lien release for this loan was never recorded. we contacted wells fargo, who acquired norwest some years ago, and they acknowledge that they loan was paid off and claim that norwest sent the release to the county but that it was never acknowledged.

now they are asking for all sorts of paperwork in order to release the lien. the things they want include: schedule b from the title commitment, the payoff confirmation letter, a copy of the recorded security instrument, the complete name of the lender that the payoff check or wire was made payable to, and copies of the payoff documents. it's been nearly 10 years since this loan was paid off, so our copies of these documents have been lost. i asked them why if their computer records show that the loan was paid off don' they just submit another copy of the release then sent in 2002 but they claim there was a flood and apparently our documents were lost.

how can we proceed from this impasse? since they admit that the loan was paid off why do we need to produce these documents? can i just make up fake documents that are similar in format to what they are asking for? presumably they won't be able to dispute that they are authentic since their copies of the documentation was lost. is there a federal or california state agency that i can threaten them with?