Strong Winds Cause Damage, Raise Fire Fears : Weather: Power lines are downed, trees are uprooted. Soot and ash blown skyward from previous fire sites are mistaken for smoke.

Blustery Santa Ana winds up to 40 m.p.h. caused scattered damage and heavy anxiety in Orange County on Sunday.

The gusts downed power lines, uprooted trees and briefly fanned a small brush fire in Fullerton. That fire, in the 2600 block of West Rosecrans Avenue, was extinguished in about 20 minutes and caused no damage.

But fear of bigger fires jangled nerves throughout Orange County on Sunday as vivid memories of the wind-driven fires of Oct. 27 had many residents watching and waiting.

In Laguna Beach, whirlwind-like winds lifted soot and ash into black, airborne streaks that resembled heavy smoke. Several hundred alarmed people in South County called police or the Orange County Fire Department during the morning wondering whether Laguna Beach was again on fire.

The callers were told that Laguna Beach and South County had no active fires.

“It’s just ashes from the old Laguna fire,” said a Fire Department dispatcher.

“The calls started coming in about 8:30 this morning when the winds started up, and we logged about 300 calls,” the dispatcher said.

Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Doris Weaver said the Police Department similarly received a rash of calls from alarmed residents.

“The soot was blown up into the air by a sort of whirlwind,” Weaver said. “It got really thick, and the air smelled very sooty.”

Meteorologists said the winds were desert-spawned Santa Anas, but with a twist: They were cool. Santa Ana winds most often are associated with hot, dry gusts, such as those that fanned the disastrous fires in the Anaheim Hills and Laguna Beach.

“The winds coming from the desert through the passes (on Sunday) were cool because the mountains are now cold and there’s also been a cold front passing through,” said James McCutcheon, a meteorologist with WeatherData, which provides weather forecasts for The Times.

McCutcheon said the Santa Anas are expected to be gone by today. The weather today, he predicted, will feature mild breezes blowing in from the ocean, in contrast to Sunday’s strong winds blowing from desert to sea.

The Sunday winds downed power lines in many areas, including Tustin, Lake Forest and Fullerton. The downed wire in Fullerton caused the brief brush fire in the 2600 block of West Rosecrans Avenue.

A Fullerton Fire Department official said the blaze was reported at 12:41 p.m. and was extinguished at 1:01 p.m. The official said the area burned by the fire was “very small” but had no immediate estimate of size or acreage.

Steve Hansen, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, said the power company could not immediately provide statistics on the number of residences hit by power outages from the downed lines.

“All I can do right now is to say we have had lines down in Fullerton, Lake Forest and Tustin, due to the winds,” he said. “These winds have been knocking down lines all over the place, from the San Gabriel Valley to the Inland Empire.”

In Irvine, the winds toppled a large eucalyptus tree onto a car that was being driven on University Drive, south of Michelson Drive, about 9:45 a.m. Sunday. Officer Denny Jenner said the driver, Farshad Farhand, 24, a UC Irvine student from Laguna Hills, escaped injury in the accident. No one else was in the car.

“The driver was lucky because there was moderate to heavy damage to the top of the car,” Jenner said. “The tree that struck the car was a large one. We had many trees blown down in Irvine by these winds during the day.”

By late Sunday afternoon, winds in Orange County had slackened to between 5 and 10 m.p.h., according to an Orange County Fire Department dispatcher, who was monitoring the weather. The lessening winds had allowed fire crews to breathe easier, she said.

“Fortunately, we’ve had no major fires,” said the dispatcher. “But we were ready. We had all our units manned, and we had patrols out during the day checking all around the county.”