Rooftop Fire Nearly Blown Out of Control : Weather: Chimney embers destroy Mission Viejo home, endanger neighbors on windy night. A warming trend is expected by Monday.

November left town in a huff and a spark.

The cold weather and dry winds provided the dangerous conditions for two Orange County house fires that started when embers from chimneys ignited roofs.

The County Fire Department responded to a Saturday night fire in Mission Viejo that destroyed a house and almost spread to neighboring houses, officials said.

“Three people were sitting watching television with a big fire in the fireplace,” said Capt. Dan Young of the fire at 26401 Alhondra Place. Hugo Romano and his wife and daughter were unhurt.

“They didn’t have a spark arrester on the chimney, and their shake shingle roof caught,” Young said. “They were totally unaware until the attic-access door burned and fell into the house. The whole roof was gone before anyone spotted it.”

Young said firefighters called for backup to patrol the neighborhood downwind as embers flew from the roof, igniting nearby shrubbery and endangering homes.

“We’re lucky we didn’t lose two or three houses on this one,” Young said.

No sooner had that fire been controlled when firefighters had to respond to a similar roof fire in Irvine.

That fire at 1 Golden Star was spotted early and burned only a small circle in the shingle roof.

“We’ll see a dozen more of these before the end of the year if people aren’t careful,” Young said. “Just because it is cold outside doesn’t mean fire can’t burn.

“With the wind howling, we can lose a whole neighborhood.”

County winds are expected subside this afternoon to 13 to 17 m.p.h. with minor gusts.

Winds on the Mojave Desert peaked Saturday at 50 m.p.h., grounding searchers looking for a missing Fullerton-bound plane with five aboard that took off from Bullhead City, Ariz., more than two weeks ago.

“We could not put out planes because of the terrible winds,” said Civil Air Patrol Capt. Catherine Murphy, mission coordinator. “We could do absolutely nothing.”

The plane’s pilot is Richard Niemela, 37, of La Mirada. His passengers are Kathy Bird, 33, of Fullerton; her husband, Jeff Bird, 32; his brother, Bradley Bird, 33, of Placentia, and Natalie Erickson, 19, of Placentia.

The winds swept across Los Angeles County, which recorded gusts up to 45 m.p.h. Saturday, according Steve Burback, meteorologist at Weather Data Inc., which supplies weather information to The Times.

About 5,000 Los Angeles customers were temporarily without power, and emergency crews were called in to repair electrical lines knocked down by strong gusts and falling tree branches, said Ed Freudenburg, spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The hardest-hit area was the eastern San Fernando Valley, particularly the Sunland-Tujunga area.

Scattered power failures were also reported in areas of Mt. Washington and throughout the Harbor and West Los Angeles areas, Freudenburg said.

Southern California Edison Co. said 800 customers along the Colorado River at Lake Havasu were without power Saturday morning. That was the only significant power failure in the area served by the company.

Pasadena, hit by sporadic outages, brought in emergency repair crews beginning at 8 p.m. Friday; crews continued to work throughout Saturday, a spokeswoman said.

Both Southern California Edison and DWP officials attributed the relatively small number of power failures to aggressive tree-trimming programs. “Five or 10 years ago we would have had major, major problems from a windstorm like this,” Freudenburg said. “The tree-trimming program has really paid off.”

The strong winds brought smiles to the faces of windsurfers at Southern California beaches.

“This is perfect weather for windsurfing, when the gusts scoot right along the shore,” said an enthused Shawn Collins, a surfing forecaster with Surfline/Wavetrak, a conditions information service for surfers.

Gusts up to 30 knots out of the north-northwest billowed colorful windsurfer sails up and down the coast, said Lt. Sonny Vardeman, a Los Angeles County lifeguard.

But that was about the only thing good about November’s exit. Even board surfing was knocked down by the wind, which kept waves to only 3 to 4 feet, despite 10-foot-high swells, Vardeman said.

A warming trend with diminishing winds is expected by Monday, with temperatures climbing slightly above normal to the low and middle 70s, according to Weather Data.

Firefighters Saturday mopped up after a 140-acre brush fire that briefly threatened homes in Sylmar on Friday. The fire, believed to have been caused by an illegal campfire, caused little damage before it was contained.

In Van Nuys, city officials opened an old National Guard armory to the homeless. The shelter, where 150 beds were available, was to remain open overnight.

It was the first time this season that the Los Angeles shelter program had been activated, spokeswoman Patricia Huff said. No other city-sponsored shelters were scheduled to open Saturday night, because temperatures were not expected to be cold enough elsewhere.

The National Weather Service must forecast temperatures of 40 or below, or 50 or below with at least a 50% chance of rain, before the city opens a shelter. Temperatures in the San Fernando Valley were expected to dip to 38.

Times staff writer Mayerene Barker contributed to this story.