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Scattered power outages and falling trees hit the Southland as fierce Santa Ana winds whip the area.

With dry conditions and fierce Santa Ana winds in the forecast through Friday, the Los Angeles Fire Department has bolstered its staffing to ensure quick response to any wildfires.

Agoura Hills was expected to take a beating, with hurricane-strength gusts forecast as high as 65 mph. Click the button at the top of the page and contribute your photos and videos of local storm damage.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Oxnard said it could be the biggest wind event to hit the Southland in the last five to 10 years.

Find out what's happening in Agoura Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Trees were knocked down and power interrupted across the Southland, including parts of Los Angeles International Airport. The airport power went out at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday for about an hour, affecting all passenger terminals and causing three international flights to be diverted to Ontario, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles. Airport officials told KTLA that operations on runways were limited by the outage and a Transportation Security Administration supervisor said that while some planes were still taking off, baggage screenings were stopped.

The famous LAX letters at the entrance to the airport went dim. Power to traffic lights leading into the airport was knocked out, Castles said.

Find out what's happening in Agoura Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

While there were no immediate reports of power outages in Agoura, about 1,100 customers in West Los Angeles reported power blackouts, City News Service reported. According to Southern California Edison, 14,000 people were without power due to wind-related outages as of 9 p.m. Wednesday. Traffic lights weren't working at some busy intersections.

Power failed in the Marina and beach areas of Venice, including the pier. A receiving station near the airport went out and power was also knocked out to large portions of Playa del Rey and Westchester, said Maychelle Yee of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Homes lost power in Laurel Canyon.

A large eucalyptus tree fell at 7:41 p.m. Wednesday on a power line and crushed a car at the North Beverly Drive home of Grey's Anatomy star Eric Dane, just north of Beverly Hills, said Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

News radio station KNX reported that it was knocked off the air at 7:15 p.m. when the station's transmitter in Torrance lost power.

Fire Chief Brian Cummings ordered heightened deployment, which included 18 additional engine companies, six brush patrols, one battalion command team, one water tender and one bulldozer strike team, according to Humphrey.

There will also be an extra 911 dispatcher at the department's communications center working alongside each battalion chief, and an officer assigned to coordinate swift and effective air operations, Humphrey said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department also announced that red flag parking restrictions will be in effect from 8 a.m. Thursday until 8 a.m. Friday, or until further notice. The restrictions are intended to prevent parked cars on narrow streets from blocking emergency vehicles. To find out if you live in an area where parking is restricted, go to lafd.org/redflag/.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County has extended its contract for two SuperScooper firefighting aircraft for another week. The aircraft are leased from the government of Quebec in Canada, according to Tony Bell of County Supervisor Mike Antonovich's office.

The SuperScoopers can carry up to 1,620 gallons of water and take only 12 seconds to scoop up water from a lake and inject it with a fire resistant foam—a combination three times as effective as water alone, Bell said.

The SuperScoopers can get airborne in as little as five minutes and can fly three hours before they have to refuel.

—City News Service contributed to this report.


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