Winds Fuel Fillmore Fire, Topple Trees : Weather: Gale-force gusts are blamed for a blaze that burned 320 acres of brush. Sunny skies and lighter breezes are predicted today.

Winds gusting up to 73 m.p.h. fueled a brush fire that scorched 320 acres in Fillmore Thursday and pushed over trees throughout Ventura County, including one that smashed into an Ojai school bus and injured the driver.

A downed power line sparked the brush fire at 10:10 a.m. on the dry hillside along California 126, threatening a mobile home park for senior citizens.

The blaze, fed by 40 m.p.h. winds with gale-force gusts, was 75% contained by 1 p.m. and was under control by 6 p.m., Ventura County fire officials said. No one was reported injured.

Officials closed California 126 from Fillmore to Piru for about six hours while 210 firefighters from Ventura and Los Angeles counties attacked the fire with 10 engines, four hand crews, two bulldozers and three helicopters, fire spokeswoman Patti O’Neill said.

An oak pushed over by the wind hit the school bus on California 150 between Ojai and Santa Paula. Two Nordhoff High School students aboard the bus escaped injury, but the driver, Dorothy Williams, was treated for cuts to her hands at Ojai Valley Community Hospital, school and California Highway Patrol officials said.

The tree broke the bus windshield, damaged the roof, ripped off the mirrors and broke some lights, said Assistant Supt. Leo Molitor of the Ojai Unified School District.

About 15 trees knocked over by the wind blocked streets in Fillmore until Caltrans and city public works laborers could remove the debris, Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Markley said.

“They are blocking roads, so they must have been of pretty good size,” he said.

Weather forecasters predicted mostly sunny skies today with highs in the 60s to near 70 degrees, said Stephanie Hunter, Weather Data Inc. meteorologist for The Times. Breezes are expected to get no higher than 25 m.p.h.

Winds were so strong Thursday morning that the CHP issued advisories for motorists from the Los Angeles County line to the Rincon area.

Nearly 2,370 Southern California Edison customers in the Santa Rosa Valley, the Sunset Hills area of Thousand Oaks and Wood Ranch in Simi Valley lost power at 7:48 a.m. for about 30 minutes after winds knocked two electrical lines together in Simi Valley, power company spokeswoman Christina Bradley said. Power was returned to most of those customers by 8:20 a.m., and the others by 9:15 a.m.

Strong breezes pulled down another line in Fillmore, causing a loss of power for 480 customers. Most of the customers regained power by 10:42 a.m., power company spokesman Tony Wilson said.

Sparking electrical wires also started a fire at 7:53 a.m. that burned about an acre of grass in the Wood Ranch area.

The Fillmore fire started on a hillside just below the white “F,” which was replaced recently after it was erased by a 200-acre brush fire a year ago, county fire spokeswoman Sandi Wells said.

The property is leased by the county to Texaco Exploration and Production Inc., not far from the El Dorado mobile home park where nearly 550 senior citizens live.

The wind, which continually changed direction, kept firefighters scrambling as the brush fire swept across the hills in erratic circles, Wells said.

El Dorado managers Helen and Al Rosette said the fire frightened some residents, particularly those with respiratory problems. “People stayed in and kept their windows and doors closed,” Helen Rosette said.

Others, they said, feared that they would lose their homes.

“This whole hill across the way was covered with a blaze,” Al Rosette said. But, he added, the same high winds that scared the residents also moved the flames away from the trailer park.

A brush fire in Halsey Canyon in Los Angeles County prevented more firefighters from being sent to Fillmore, Wells said.

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