Santa Anas Lack Zip, but Zap Power

On Saturday, the earth moved. On Sunday, it was the wind’s turn.

Moderate gusts from Santa Ana winds caused sporadic power outages Sunday morning affecting more than 5,000 customers around Orange County. The dry winds also put local firefighters on alert for possible wildfires, officials said.

Residents in northern Orange County were alarmed Sunday morning when a thick, pungent cloud of smoke billowed over the Chino Hills area, where a fire that began in a dairy farm manure pile spread to about 75 acres in the Prado Dam basin.

“Smoke is coming over the mountains and into the cities dropping some ash,” said Robin Butler, spokeswoman for the Anaheim Fire Department. “It looks a lot closer than it is and it is causing a lot of commotion.”

San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Phil Armentrout said the fire began spontaneously in a manure pit at the Red Star Dairy in Chino Hills and gusty winds pushed burning embers westward.

“It got into the brush and the trees and turned into a brush fire,” Armentrout said about 3:15 p.m. “The wind was driving it west toward Chino Hills State Park, but it looks like the winds have died down and we have it pretty much under control.”

He said firefighters working in the Prado basin were aided by three water planes and two helicopters.

“It’s real thick stuff down there, and it’s hard to get through,” he said.

The winds brought more than manure smoke problems.

In Huntington Beach, about 4,000 customers in three neighborhoods lost power for several hours after lines were blown down. Similar problems affected about 1,400 customers in Yorba Linda and about 55 customers in Costa Mesa, said Paul Klein, spokesman for Southern California Edison.

Despite the outages, Sunday’s winds were weaker than expected, said Stacey Johnstone, a meteorologist for WeatherData, Inc., which provides weather information to The Times.

The strongest gusts peaked at 50 mph in the Cajon Pass, she said. By the time the winds reached Orange County they had weakened into warm breezes instead of the Santa Ana’s trademark blast-furnace gusts.

The wind began with a high-pressure system over the Four Corners region, and was expected to weaken and move on in the next day or two.

“By the end of the week, we’ll do the old switch and the winds will go more to onshore,” Johnstone said, bringing more seasonable hazy mornings.

Times correspondent Ana Cholo-Tipton contributed to this report.