Winds Fuel 3 New Wildfires : Destruction: New blazes in Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Ojai bring total of scorched brush to 30,000 acres. Firefighters are stretched thin.

Three new wildfires raced through Ventura County on Wednesday as hot winds up to 65 m.p.h. pushed a day-old arson fire across 21,000 acres of brushland from Thousand Oaks to the sea.

The new fires near Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Ojai--which combined to scorch an additional 9,000 acres--stretched the already overworked ranks of almost 2,000 firefighters battling to contain the blazes.

The fires gave the county an eerie look--with huge plumes of acrid brown smoke towering over the hills and farmland, and fires dotting the ridgelines on both ends of the county.

The blazes cut through brushland and devoured wilderness areas. The Pacific Coast Highway was shut down completely throughout the day, and other freeways and rail service were disrupted. The Thousand Oaks fire, which began Tuesday afternoon with an arsonist’s flame near the 16th green of the Los Robles Golf Course, swelled into a monster that chewed its way across brush-capped mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

By midday Wednesday, it had wrapped itself down over the rugged western face of Point Mugu and swallowed thousands of acres of coastal brushland almost to the Los Angeles County line--wind-born sparks from the fire showering into the ocean surf.

Helicopters clattered back and forth throughout the day from the ocean to coastal neighborhoods, dousing blazing thickets with huge buckets of water scooped from the sea.

Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency in Southern California, but Ventura County fire officials barely hid their frustration as they scrambled to dispatch firefighting teams, some of whom had been working nearly 48 hours straight.

“All we can do is juggle resources and hope we’re at the right place at the right time,” said Ventura County Fire Chief George Lund. “We can’t really prepare, we just have to react.”

“It’s very close to what we call a firestorm,” said Engineer Alan Campbell, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “It’s developed its own weather. It gets so intense and so hot that it starts sucking in all the air, and that’s where we get 65-mile-an-hour winds.”

In Simi Valley, a suspected arsonist started a fire about 1 a.m. near Santa Susana Road that spread over 1,500 acres of brush. It badly burned four Los Angeles city firefighters who sought refuge in their rig, and it forced evacuation of 400 homes in Box Canyon and Lilac Lane. By 5 p.m., 700 firefighters had totally surrounded the burn area.

A Santa Paula fire started at 2 a.m. near Mupu Elementary School, roaring through Wheeler and Aliso canyons and moving westward toward Highway 126 and Ventura. By 7 p.m., the fire had destroyed more than 4,000 acres of brush and reached into Canada Larga north of Ventura, despite the work of 230 firefighters on scene.

And a fire that began near Ojai on the west side of Matilija Canyon about 10 a.m. destroyed 1,400 acres of thickly wooded hillside and threatened 65 homes and Wheeler Hot Springs.

With 120 firefighters on duty--80 standing by to hose down structures and only 40 actively fighting the fire--officials there waited anxiously for reinforcements.

The Santa Paula fire appeared to be moving the fastest, advancing from the city’s northwestern edge all the way to Canada Larga by nightfall Wednesday.

County Fire Chief George Lund said the fire threatened the city of Ventura, saying: “The potential is there that it could move in on the city during the night.”

But Ventura city fire officials predicted that they could fend off the blaze with airdrops of fire retardant chemicals and a team of bulldozers if the weather did not worsen.

Throughout the day, fire officials said, dispatchers fielded crank calls from people claiming to have set some of the fires. Ventura County sheriff’s deputies stopped answering all but emergency calls as deputies worked roadblocks and helped with evacuations around the county.

And early Wednesday morning, firefighters quickly put out a suspected arson fire set near Lake Sherwood. “We picked that off really quick,” said Chief Lund.

By Wednesday night, firefighting forces had spent $700,000 on ground crews fighting the Thousand Oaks blaze alone, plus an estimated $500,000 per day on air support, said Rick Guibbini, an official from the California Department of Forestry.

By nightfall Wednesday, firefighters were battling to control flames that had devoured more than 30,000 acres of brushland across Ventura County.

The Simi-Chatsworth fire had forced Metrolink to shut down commuter service between Moorpark and Chatsworth from 5:15 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Railroad officials had about 125 stranded commuters shuttled by bus from the Simi Valley and Moorpark stations past fire-locked rail lines to the Chatsworth stations where trains waited to take them on to Los Angeles, railway officials said.

The fires also forced temporary closures of Highway 150 near Ojai and the Simi Valley Freeway.

Ventura County meteorologist Kent Field predicted the prevailing hot Santa Ana winds blowing to the southwest could ease and switch to an eastbound flow from the sea by this afternoon, which would bring humidity in the area back up from 5% to its normal 60% to 70%.

But the wind shift could also change the fire’s direction, pushing it toward unburned ground and fresh fuel along the Los Angeles County border, he said.

By midafternoon Wednesday, Los Angeles police were questioning a 27-year-old transient in connection with the Simi-Chatsworth fire, said Sgt. John Ahrens of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division.

The man, whom residents said had been sleeping in the brush for several weeks, matched the description of someone who had been seen in the area when the fire started, police said.

The Thousand Oaks fire proved the most challenging, vexing firefighting teams that had been on duty for nearly 48 hours.

“This fire is spreading in all four directions,” said Doug Campbell, a fire-behavior analyst for the Ventura County Fire Department. “I’m afraid the behavior will be beyond the limits of control until the weather changes.”

Even if the head of the fire is stopped at the Pacific Ocean, he said, the high winds could turn the flames in another direction, giving the blaze a new head.

Any fire that gets higher than eight feet tall is considered out of control, he said. “It’s so hot you can’t get close and you can’t put a wide enough line to hold it.”

By late Tuesday night, winds had quieted somewhat and firefighters had stopped the southwesterly march of the Thousand Oaks fire at Potrero Road.

Capt. Gary Young said of homes there: “Those tile roofs were lifesavers. If those had been shake roofs, we would have been way overwhelmed.”

Then the winds kicked up again about 2 a.m., pushing the fire across the road and into National Park Service land that had not burned since 1955.

As daytime heat that eventually increased to 92 degrees pumped temperatures even higher, a 50-foot-high wall of flame swept southwest across hills between Lynn Road and Potrero roads just east of Wendy Drive, coming within 25 to 30 feet of newer, tile-roofed homes built at the foot of the mountains.

During the morning, the fire rolled through Deer Creek Canyon, devouring seven homes there, and moved across the coastal peaks, destroying the ornate ranch of award-winning Hollywood set designer Tony Duquette.

Employees at the Animal Actors ranch near Lake Sherwood evacuated more than 100 exotic animals including monkeys, birds and three elephants. They brought the smaller ones in cages to private homes and the larger ones to an empty field on Westlake Boulevard where caretakers were watching over them.

The Pacific Coast Highway near the fire’s southwestern corner was closed at 6:30 a.m. just south of Las Posas Road as the fire reached the ridge overlooking the highway. Southbound traffic was diverted onto Las Posas. Traffic was light, apparently because motorists were alerted farther north.

“At about 6:30 we watched it just sweep down the mountain,” said CHP Officer Mike Robbins. “If you can imagine it, the entire hillside was solid burning flame. It was incredible.”

Renee Groux was one of four firefighters from Point Mugu who tried to protect the communications facilities on the hillside.

“It came at us and it was intense and it was hot,” she said. “At one point we got real nervous, because it was bearing down on us. But we stood our ground.”

Contributing to coverage of the fire were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Dwayne Bray, Sara Catania, Jack Cheevers, Tina Daunt, Pancho Doll, Daryl Kelley, Peggy Y. Lee, Carlos V. Lozano, Jeff Meyers, Joanna Miller, Mack Reed, Stephanie Simon and Constance Sommer. Also contributing were correspondents Maia Davis, Brenda Day, Julie Fields, Robin Greene, James Maiella Jr., Patrick McCartney, Jeff McDonald, J.E. Mitchell, Matthew Mosk and Leo Smith. Staff assistants Rod Bosch and Desiree Dreeuws also contributed to the coverage.