A Quiet Independence Day : Southland Plays It Cool on the Holiday as Temperatures Drop, Crowds Behave

Southern California celebrated Independence Day in suitably independent fashion Thursday.

Daytime hours brought umbrellas and surfboards to the beaches, holiday drivers to the freeways, picnic baskets to the parks, parade watchers to the sidewalks and firefighters to the alert.

Nightfall brought fireworks watchers to the stadiums and traffic officers to the streets.

Even the weather seemed to cooperate: a bone-dry, triple-digit heat wave that had turned tempers to tatters and tongues to sandpaper earlier in the week finally began to break, with afternoon highs falling four or five degrees below predicted maximums.

Santa Ana recorded Orange County’s high temperature of 94 degrees, much cooler than the scorching 100-plus record readings from earlier in the week. The high temperature was recorded before noon. Later, an unexpected breeze quickly dropped temperatures, and by 5 p.m. Santa Ana had cooled to 78 degrees.

About 500,000 people spent at least a portion of the Fourth on Orange County beaches, where crowds were huge but orderly. In fact, traffic congestion on Pacific Coast Highway seemed to be the primary police problem of the day.

“We had a pretty quiet day for the Fourth. The beaches were crowded. People were having a good time . . . behaving themselves,” said Lt. Bob Benson of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Other law enforcement agencies in the county also were surprised and relieved at the generally sedate holiday.

“It’s been one of the quietest Fourth of Julys I’ve seen so far,” said Orange Police Sgt. Dennis Flanagan.

In Huntington Beach, authorities estimated that as many as 200,000 people watched the big Fourth of July parade in the morning.

The Huntington Beach city and state parks reported 80,000 people on the beach afterward. The temperature there reached only 75, and the water temperature was 66.

“People just came in droves,” said Mike Starkweather, the lifeguard supervisor at Huntington State Beach. He also said lifeguards had a rather slow rescue day because of the gentle waves.

Newport Beach attracted about 100,000. The breezes there also induced hordes of sailors to take to the sea in their colorful boats.

Although people were standing about eight-deep at Neptune’s Locker, a small sandwich and beer establishment at the Huntington City Pier, owner Ella Christiansen said beer sales were slow this Fourth of July.

“Earlier this week, when it was so hot, I sold a lot of

beer. I sold so much I still haven’t had time to tally the receipts,” she said. “But today, it’s been slow. The weather is very nice and cool and people aren’t drinking too much beer today.”

For a few--firefighters, emergency physicians, nurses--and police officers--the Fourth was just another workday.

A red flag alert, signifying extreme fire danger, and relative humidity that dropped to just a point or two above 10% during the afternoon caused worried officials to cancel community fireworks shows in Burbank, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Ojai.

Elsewhere, the shows went off more or less as planned.

Police said 14 people were killed in traffic accidents in the state during the first 18 hours of the holiday, and the California Highway Patrol beefed up its field force by 25% during the afternoon and evening in an effort to “curb” drunk drivers.

“We don’t want to spoil anyone’s Fourth,” said CHP spokesman Dave Doon. “It’s just that we’d like them to be around for the fifth, sixth and seventh, too.”

In south Orange County, a fire consumed 35 acres of brush on land owned by TRW Inc. north of San Clemente near Camp Pendleton. The afternoon fire was extinguished in two hours by fire companies from San Clemente, Camp Pendleton and TRW, according to Pat Antrim, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Department.

Fire officials had been concerned that explosives tested on the grounds for Ford Aerospace & Communications Corp., including tanks and missiles, might be exposed to the fire. But a spokeswoman for TRW said the fire never posed a danger to vehicles, structures or people in the vicinity.