THE SOUTHLAND FIRESTORM : Young and Elderly Warned to Stay Indoors Because of Smoke : Safety: Officials urge even healthy people to be wary. The county advisory is linked to the fires and is likely to remain in effect through the weekend.

Children and the elderly should stay indoors and adults should curtail outdoor activities in areas heavily covered by smoke, public health officials warned Thursday.

Anyone sensitive to the effects of poor air quality--including children, the elderly and the ill--should keep windows and doors closed and air conditioners or other air filters running to minimize the amount of smoke they inhale, doctors said.

Pregnant women who experience nausea or breathing problems should also stay indoors and use air filters, although there is little risk from a short exposure for an unborn child.

Schools in smoky areas should keep children indoors during recess, said Dr. Gary Feldman, Ventura County’s public health officer. And even healthy people should stay away from heavy smoke if they can.

“If you see smoke and can smell it, it’s best to avoid it,” Feldman said.

Meteorologists were calling for west winds today, followed Saturday by a recurrence of the hot east winds that fueled the fires earlier this week. As the winds change, the smoke, which is trapped relatively low to the ground by an inversion layer of hot air, will be buffeted back and forth across the county, keeping air quality poor through the weekend.

With that scenario, and the fear that still more fires could break out, Feldman said the health warning is likely to stay in effect through the weekend.

“The really upsetting thing about this is that these fires may be arson-related,” he said.

The 33,000-acre Green Meadows fire in Thousand Oaks and the fires that consumed another 23,000 acres in Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Ojai have been blamed on arson.

The dense smoke that hovered over the county like a heavy fog triggered allergic and breathing problems for many who suffer from allergies, asthma or lung ailments, physicians said.

Dr. James Orlowski, an Oxnard allergist, said children came home from school complaining about the smoke.

“Right after school, every pharmacy in town was calling for inhaler refills,” he said. “The children came home wheezing and some adults left work early. I’ve had people calling to be new patients too.”

Symptoms include wheezing, tightness in the chest and a feeling that even deep breaths are not drawing in enough air, Orlowski said. He said as many as 10% to 20% of children could have asthmatic tendencies.

Dr. James W. Villaveces, a Ventura allergist, said people should treat smoke “like a bad smog attack.” Although the pollutant of concern in Ventura County is ozone, Villaveces said studies are finding that people are also harmed by the tiny particles of dust and other debris suspended in the air.

Those kinds of particulates are thick in air during a fire, he said.

“They are finding now that smoke particulates are having a major effect on people,” he said.

The 600 students who attend Banyan School in Newbury Park were kept indoors during lunch and recesses Thursday after the sky shifted from relatively clear to dark and smoky gray, Principal George Coyle said.

Doors were closed and teachers turned on fans. They pulled out games usually saved for rainy days to entertain their kindergarten through sixth-grade classes, Coyle said.

“The kids are pretty sensitive to the smoke,” he said. Some of the students whose homes were in the path of the fire earlier in the week had been evacuated, but most children had returned to their homes by Thursday.

“The teachers did a lot of things to allow the kids to share their experiences and let them talk through it,” he said.

The outlook for outdoor play today and through the weekend should be relatively unchanged, said Kent Field, meteorologist with the Air Pollution Control District, who has been advising the county’s fire teams on wind patterns and other weather conditions.

Temperatures were expected to cool slightly today to the upper 60s along the coast and the 70s inland. Winds were to be light at about 5 m.p.h. and mostly out of the west. Humidity was expected to be in the normal range of about 80% to 90% along the coast and 50% to 70% inland.

But Saturday morning, with the east winds kicking up, the picture is expected to change drastically, Field said.

Humidity will drop to about 5%. Temperatures will rise to between the upper 80s and the low 90s, and the hot, east winds will be about 25 m.p.h. with gusts up to 45 m.p.h.