Jittery O.C. Residents Smell Smoke, Worry About Fire : Rumors: Resurgence of anxiety over blazes prompts reopening of emergency hot line. Over 1,000 calls come in.

SANTA ANA — County residents, spooked by last week’s fires here and media reports of fires Tuesday in Los Angeles and Riverside counties, have flooded fire emergency operators with worried calls about rumors and reports of blazes in their neighborhoods.

“What’s happening is that we’re getting a call approximately every minute to minute-and-a-half,” County Fire Department spokeswoman Emmy Day said.

“I just got a call from a lady from Beverly Hills, who lives here. She’s been hearing rumors--not even from the media. She said, ‘I heard Mission Viejo has a fire.’ Somebody might be driving down the freeway, and sees smoke.”

Such queries, Day said, are “legitimate concerns, and we treat them that way. But there are no new, active fires now in Orange County. There have been some reported earlier today, but they either turned out not to be a fire, or ashes stirred up by the wind, or very small fires that were quickly extinguished.”

Concern was especially strong in South County, Day said, largely because of the Ortega fire, which, although contained, “is still an active fire. The wind blows the smoke toward them, and they smell it. Naturally, those people are more nervous.”

The county fire department’s rumor control hot line, set up by the department’s Emergency Management Division, was officially shut down at 6 p.m. Sunday. But the resurgence of anxiety about fires Tuesday caused county officials to reopen the office, which is staffed by five people answering calls. By midafternoon, the calls totaled more than 1,200, coming in at a peak rate of 150 to 200 an hour.

“We just started to get a lot of telephone calls,” said Ellen S. McNeill, program coordinator for the emergency management division, “so we started to staff the center again.”

Smoke from the Ortega fire was on the minds of most South County callers, said McNeill, who was answering the phone herself.

“That’s their primary concern,” she said. “They just want to be sure nothing is happening in Laguna Beach. . . . With the winds picking up, people are a bit nervous, and reasonably so.”

There was a distinct contrast between last week’s calls and those Tuesday, she said.

During last week’s fire, she said, the phones at the center were “ringing off the hook.”

On Tuesday, she said, “it was a case of citizens being more concerned and apprehensive, rather than last week, when they were really scared, wanting to know whether they should evacuate. Today, they’re trying to be more prepared for any danger that might come their way.”