Winds Fan Brush Fires Near Coast : Weather: About 4,000 sparsely populated acres burn, and two homes are destroyed by flames near Point Mugu. Boaters and Coast Guardsmen are rescued at sea.

Santa Ana winds gusting up to 50 m.p.h. swept parts of the Southland on Sunday, fanning several brush fires, one of which charred 4,000 sparsely populated acres and destroyed two homes near Malibu. The winds also tossed a Coast Guard rescue crew overboard in rough seas.

At the Point Mugu Naval Air Station, which held its annual air show Sunday despite the wind, spokeswoman Eve Miller said: “It was very, very, very windy. We had tents and things that were blown over during the night. Some of them were just in tatters.”

“It’ll blow hairpieces clear across town,” said meteorologist Bill Hoffer of the National Weather Service, describing the powerful gusts.

But the wind blew fire, not hairpieces, through the canyons and hillsides around Point Mugu, just across the Ventura County line from Malibu.

The fast-moving blaze, which erupted at 5 a.m. and was 75% contained by late Sunday evening, destroyed two mountaintop homes and three other buildings and also forced the evacuation of more than 2,000 campers. The evacuees included 110 frightened sixth- and seventh-graders who cut short a weekend camping trip by walking a half-mile from their campground to a nearby fire station.

At times, the fire stretched for two miles along the coast. It sent a thick column of brown smoke billowing out over the Pacific Ocean, and left a hilltop campground at Point Mugu State Park looking like a barren moonscape.

One official said the smoke was “darker than any night I’ve ever been in.”

More than 560 firefighters battled the blaze, which prompted authorities to close an eight-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, from Encinal Canyon Road in Los Angeles County to Las Posas Road in Ventura County. At one point, flames shot across the road.

There were only two minor injuries--both to firefighters--and authorities made no estimate of the monetary damage. They expected the fire to burn through the night, as they continued to fight it with a scaled-down crew. Cause of the blaze, which broke out at Deer Creek and Pacific View roads, was under investigation.

The flames sent an unknown number of residents--including entertainer Dick Clark--scurrying down the winding canyon roads toward the ocean for safety. Clark’s Decker Canyon home was saved by firefighters who turned the flames away, authorities said.

One of Clark’s neighbors, Jo Ann Malac, said she was awakened by the winds at 4 a.m., when part of her horse corral blew onto her mobile home, punching a hole in the top.

At 6 a.m., she said, a wall of fire appeared across the street from her property. She was alone at the time, accompanied only by her dog.

“I freaked out,” she said. “We were both screaming and barking.”

She and the dog hopped in her car and fled to safety with the flames literally chasing her down Deer Creek Road.

She recalled being stuck behind another driver and “I thought, God, he’s not going fast enough.” She later learned the other driver was Clark.

Farther north, the winds churned the sea near Oxnard and the Channel Islands, where at least 15 people--including a four-man Coast Guard crew--were rescued from their vessels by the Coast Guard and the Navy.

In one instance, a Coast Guard vessel attempting to reach two people on a fishing boat ran aground on Santa Cruz Island, and a Navy helicopter was dispatched from Point Mugu to rescue the would-be rescuers.

The four members of the Coast Guard crew--who were tossed out of their lifeboat as it hit the breakers in 10-foot-high seas--were reported safe, as were the two people on board the fishing boat, Coast Guard Lt. Mark Hudson said.

“‘We’re having a real busy day,” he said. “No one expected the drastic weather change.”

The ill-fated Coast Guard rescue attempt took place after Navy and Coast Guard helicopters had already plucked nine people from boats that were yanked from their anchorages by high winds off Santa Rosa and Anacapa islands.

One woman suffered a minor head injury and five other boaters were treated at a hospital for exposure.

The wind also brought its wrath to the San Fernando Valley, where 4,000 customers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were without electrical power for several hours Sunday morning. The outages began at 4 a.m. and occurred in the Chatsworth, Canoga Park and Granada Hills area.

The DWP reported that most customers had power restored within two hours.

The dry Santa Ana winds came out of the north and northeast, according Hoffer. A high-pressure system was circulating in Idaho, Washington, eastern Oregon and central Montana, forcing the winds to whip through the deserts toward the coast.

The winds, which at 11 a.m. Sunday were gusting as high as 50 m.p.h. at Laguna Peak near the Point Mugu air station, had died down somewhat by afternoon, and were expected to diminish considerably today after picking up again during the night, Hoffer said.

The gusts made firefighting especially frustrating. As the wind whipped through the canyons around Point Mugu, temperatures grew hotter, drying out brush, authorities said.

Firefighters were relegated to simply trying to protect structures on the ground, while helicopters and small planes made water drops.

“We don’t have access to water up in those canyons. We are fighting it mainly by air,” said Sandy Wells, a Ventura County Fire Department spokeswoman.

But officials were forced to call off the helicopters and airplanes at nightfall. About 80 firefighters were expected to work through the night in an attempt to force the blaze toward the ocean, where they hoped to contain it today.

The fire blackened about 90 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and charred about 1,500 acres in Point Mugu State Park.

Visitors to three park campgrounds--Camp Hess Kramer, Danielson Ranch and Thorn Hill Broom Beach--were evacuated, as were 1,500 campers at Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu, although authorities said the Leo Carrillo property, which was several miles from the fire, was evacuated only as a precaution.

At Camp Hess Kramer, 110 youngsters and 20 counselors from two San Fernando Valley synagogues were getting out of bed when Ventura County fire officials arrived to evacuate them. “There were a lot of kids crying and running around,” said counselor Neal Kavalsky. “I had one kid who was scared out of his mind. It took four or five of us to calm him down.”

In addition to the Point Mugu fire, brush fires also broke out Sunday in Moorpark, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, also in Ventura County.

The Simi Valley fire, which was reported at 4:30 a.m., destroyed 375 acres in the Black Canyon-Box Canyon area. No homes or structures were damaged, and that fire, which broke out about the same time as the Point Mugu blaze, was extinguished shortly after noon.

The Moorpark blaze, which scorched 20 acres and destroyed one building, was reported shortly before sundown and contained by 7 p.m. The Thousand Oaks fire, which broke out in the Bard Lake area, charred 50 acres and also was contained by 7 p.m., officials said. The causes of all three blazes were under investigation.