The Southland Firestorms: The Battle Goes On : Smoke Cloud Alarms Some Residents in the Valley : Weather: A good wind blowing from offshore darkens sky and brings confusion as wildfire burns. Police receive dozens of calls.

To Monica Byron, there are good winds and there are bad winds. Sometimes, it just gets a little tough to figure out which is which.

On Wednesday afternoon, for instance, when an ominous cloud of dark smoke blanketed much of the San Fernando Valley, Byron thought that the bad winds--the infamous Santa Anas--had whipped up a new blaze that might sweep down from the hills and carve a path of destruction into the Valley.

Instead, it was the good wind, an easterly breeze that rolled into the Valley from the ocean--but in doing so, it spread throughout the Valley the smoke from the Calabasas-Malibu fire, which had previously been pushed southward over the ocean.

“When the wind blew the smoke in, I thought it would blow the fire this way too,” said Byron, a 22-year-old cashier at an Encino movie complex. “It’s easy to get confused because it seems to change direction every other minute.”

Meanwhile, Christopher James, 21, of Tarzana was also momentarily disoriented by the good wind. “It was very strange,” said the CSUN senior, who was swimming in his back-yard pool at the time.

“When I came up for air, I looked around and saw all the smoke and thought the fire was in my yard. I was going to go run somewhere but realized it was probably safest to be in the pool.”

According to local police, Byron and James were not the only ones confused. Dozens of alarmed residents who saw the smoke called for information, fearing the worst.

“For a while there, things got pretty hectic,” said Los Angeles Police Officer Greg Cannon, who was answering telephones at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire station. “We got a lot of calls when the smoke rolled in, but since then, the winds seem to have shifted again and things have calmed down.”

Forecasters say that until this weekend, the tug-of-war between the onshore and offshore winds will continue, which might mean more waves of smoke pouring into the San Fernando Valley occasionally.

“In the next day or so, we are expecting more of a marine layer in the afternoons,” said James McCutcheon, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., a service that provides forecasts for The Times. “It will be more noticeable because we won’t have a strong or moderate Santa Ana for the next few days either.”

For those with respiratory ailments, doctors give the same advice as they would for coping with an excessively smoggy day: Curtail exposure to the smoke, do not exercise outdoors, and use air conditioning instead of opening doors and windows when at home or inside cars.

“It is bad, and seems particularly bad in the Valley and West Valley,” said Dr. Jim Feloney, an Encino pulmonary specialist. “It can be an irritant, and depending on where some of the smoke and soot is coming from, some of the vapors can be toxic.”