Malibu Fire Singes Nerves, Little Else : Emergency: Four minor injuries, no damage reported. The blaze is a chilling reminder of last year’s disaster.

No one was evacuated. Property damage was nil. And the most serious injury was to a woman whose Ford Explorer hit a battalion chief’s Suburban.

But Malibu nonetheless got a sobering dose of deja vu Thursday as brush fires danced once again through canyons still scarred by last year’s devastating blaze.

As gusting winds up to 50 m.p.h. sent tumbleweeds flying and knocked over metal trash cans, the first big fire of the season hit Latigo Canyon at 1:22 p.m., officials said. The blaze, which blackened 62 acres of chaparral before it was extinguished, caused only four injuries--all minor--and no damage to the area’s homes.

Still, for many in the rich but rugged area, it served as a chilling reminder of last year, when brush fires blackened 17,000 acres and destroyed 323 homes. Despite the addition this year of a new firefighting weapon--two Super Scooper water-dropping planes leased from a Canadian company--the flames immediately sparked a red alert as residents rushed to water their roofs and pack their cars, and television news helicopters went to live reports.

“It was, like, an exact repeat,” builder Pat Taylor, who was helping reconstruct a Las Flores Canyon building destroyed last year, said when his girlfriend warned him that the flames had crept to within a mile of his Corral Canyon home.

“(She) called me on the phone (at the job site),” Taylor said, “and it was like, here we go again.”

Malibu has never been a stranger to brush fires; some residents, in fact, were expecting this one. Humidity had hovered around 10% all day.

Grant Adamson, whose family owns the Malibu Beach RV Park, said many families in his compound had hooked up their trailers early in the day and were ready to pull out at a moment’s notice.

“We’ve been through a lot of these over the years and we know how to prepare for them,” he said, “but you never can tell.”

County Fire Inspector Gary Sutter said firefighters were summoned initially to a small blaze at Pacific Coast Highway and Latigo Canyon Road. Within 15 minutes, the flames had covered 30 acres, he said, and the conflagration steadily grew as the high winds kept the Super Scoopers from flying low enough to accurately aim their water drops.

Sutter said that although more than 50 homes are scattered throughout the area, no houses were damaged as the flames hopped from spot to spot.

However, smoke from the fire forced the closure for most of the afternoon of several local thoroughfares, including a section of the Pacific Coast Highway between Kanan and Malibu roads. And there were four injuries reported--one from smoke inhalation, two more to firefighters and the fourth from a traffic accident that resulted from the massive traffic jams created by roadblocks in the area.

Fire officials said Sara Burdell, 69, of Malibu was taken to St. John’s Hospital for treatment of minor injuries after she tried to make a U-turn to cut out of a traffic jam at the Pacific Coast Highway roadblock.

As she swerved, officials said, she pulled into the path of an oncoming GMC Suburban truck driven by Los Angeles County Fire Battalion Chief Dan Scott. Scott, who was uninjured, was heading down PCH in the center divider when the crash occurred.

In addition, an unidentified 53-year-old transient was treated for smoke inhalation. Officials said a backfire set to halt the fire’s advance ignited some magazines and books that the man had stored in trash cans near his encampment at Pacific Coast Highway and Latigo Canyon Road.

They said the burning papers blew across the highway, setting fire at one point to palm trees in front of luxury oceanfront condominiums at Tivoli Cove. That hot spot, however, was quickly contained, officials said.

The fire was an especially difficult one for the more than 300 firefighters dispatched to the scene, as the winds hampered the aerial assault from seven water-dropping helicopters and the two Super Scoopers. Access to fire lines was also impeded by the rough terrain, Sutter said. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries--one from a cactus, the other to his eye. Sutter said winds died down late in the afternoon, and by 5 p.m. the fire was mostly contained. Officials expected the flames to be extinguished by dawn.

Fire officials said that the cause of the fire was under investigation, but that they were focusing at least initially on a downed power line. Vegetation was also a factor, Sutter said, noting that the fire Thursday “was in an area that didn’t burn last time.”

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said the dry Santa Ana winds were expected to continue into the weekend. Wind advisories were also posted Thursday on several transmountain and desert highways, including Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass and in San Diego County and U.S. 395 in San Bernardino and Kern counties.

The advisories cautioned against travel in high-profile vehicles such as campers and trailers, and motorists were warned that windblown clouds of dust and sand were reducing visibility to a few yards in some desert areas.

Brack said the Santa Ana condition was being generated by the circulation around a large high-pressure system centered over southern Idaho. He said the sporadic, gusting winds will keep pummeling Southern California until the system finally begins moving out to the east, probably Saturday.

Fair to partly cloudy skies are expected here Sunday and Monday, with mostly sunny skies Tuesday.

Thursday’s high temperature at the Los Angeles Civic Center was 71 degrees, following an overnight low of 48. Relative humidity ranged from a relatively dry high of 49% to a low of 12%.

Total precipitation for the rainfall season--which began July 1--is 0.8 of an inch, compared to a normal total for the date of 3.43 inches. Brack said it does not look as though any more rain will fall until late next week at the earliest.

Times staff writers Eric Malnic, Alan Abrahamson and Shawn Hubler, and correspondent Kathleen Kelleher contributed to this story.

* WINDS WREAK HAVOC: Gusts down power lines, ignite fire, damaging O.C. home. B1