Santa Anas and O.C. Come to Blows

High winds ripped through parts of Orange County on Thursday, causing power outages and knocking down limbs in Yorba Linda and Westminster. By early afternoon, 18,060 homes and businesses had lost electricity because of downed power lines. Southern California Edison had all but 554 customers reconnected by the time the winds subsided midafternoon, spokesman Paul Klein said. “These storms do create outages,” he said. “We work as quickly as we can to restore them.”

In some places, equipment was damaged. A small transformer exploded at 8:20 a.m. on Bullard Lane in Tustin, downing power lines and causing a small brush fire that was quickly extinguished, said Capt. Paul Hunter of the Orange County Fire Authority.

When the winds really kick up, to between 50 and 60 mph, the department declares it a “red flag” day and activates extra trucks and personnel, Hunter said. Not Thursday. “These are your typical Sana Ana winds,” he said.

Nonetheless, his department was kept busy with a 10 a.m. fire on Poppy Circle in Westminster, also caused by downed power lines. The wind knocked the lines into a wood pile, which sparked a small fire that spread to a patch of grass. That blaze also was put out quickly.

The Yorba Linda Public Works Department sent six workers out in trucks to patrol the streets for blown-down limbs and patio umbrellas. “We’re on a wind alert,” Public Works Director Jim Smith said. “We’re just driving around to make sure public rights of way are kept clear. It’s not anything our folks haven’t been able to stay with.”

At 8 a.m., the wind was blowing through Yorba Linda at 40 mph. By 3 p.m., Smith looked out his window to relative calm.

At John Wayne Airport, planes landed with the wind instead of into it for the day, spokeswoman Yolanda Perez said. “We flew the opposite way we normally do,” she said. “Planes are taking off into the wind because it gives them lift.”

At Huntington Beach, waves reached 8 feet in the morning. But that was all a world away from the beaches of San Clemente. “There is no wind here today,” lifeguard Andrew Powell said. “I’m looking at a flag right now, and it is barely even lifting up. The water has been like sheet glass all day.”

Elsewhere, gusts of up to 40 mph tore through Camarillo, while Oxnard saw winds of 38 mph, and Ventura Harbor had 5-foot rolling seas.

Forecasters from the National Weather Service said winds are expected to die down by today and temperatures will drop to the 70s.

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Times staff writer David Kelly contributed to this report.