Sad Homecomings at Emerald Bay : Homes: Families react differently upon seeing ravages of fire. But there’s a common goal of rebuilding, going on with life.

LAGUNA BEACH —  Staring intently down the spongy slope where her expensive Emerald Bay home once stood, Sally Forbes looked numb with shock as her sons and a daughter raked through the debris in search of heirloom jewelry.

“Where was your jewelry box in the bedroom, mom?” one son called up to her. She barely shrugged, trying to determine if her son was standing even close to what had been her bedroom in the 4,000-square-foot, two-story home that was destroyed Wednesday when Santa Ana winds pushed fire through Emerald Canyon.

Her home might have burned in a 1979 canyon fire had the winds not suddenly turned. This time, she said Thursday, the fire just came too fast.

But like many of her affluent neighbors, Forbes was determined not to let this disaster defeat her.

With her voice shaking, she proclaimed that her family would rebuild their next home on the same spot.

“Absolutely! Absolutely! There’s a spirit here, and the phoenix is going to rise from the ashes,” Forbes said.

The 529-house Emerald Bay development, perched on a bluff overlooking a stunning slice of Pacific shore, is home to doctors, lawyers, and wealthy patrons of the arts. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth have houses there, and the bougainvillea-covered gates hide the “beach homes” of Las Vegas casino owners and of America’s richest man, Warren E. Buffett.

Aldrin, Ueberroth and Buffett were spared, but not so lucky was Barton K. Boyd, a high-ranking executive with the Walt Disney Co. A Disney spokesman described Boyd’s house as a “three-level, custom dream house” with a view, pool and waterfall. It was only a couple of years old.

“He is a long-term Laguna Beach loyalist and really loves it there,” the spokesman said, so much so that Boyd commuted two hours a day to his office in Burbank.

It was just before dawn Thursday, as small puffs of smoke still filled the canyon, that weary firefighters tossed water on the last smoldering flames of the blaze.

The inferno had hopscotched over cul-de-sacs, miraculously missing certain houses and burning others to the ground.

That Forbes and her neighbors were even standing among the ruins early Thursday was proof of their determination to get on with their lives less than 24 hours after the devastating fire claimed about 60 Emerald Bay mansions.

They had defied police roadblocks along Coast Highway by renting or borrowing boats and swimming to shore, riding bicycles, walking several miles along the beach from neighboring communities, and hitching rides with firefighters and others who had police clearance.

What they found was not unexpected, yet still came as a shock.

Broken bathroom sinks and shower stalls rose above the rubble, the walls around them no longer standing. On some streets, only the chimney stacks remained to show where the homes had been.

And a disoriented cat crawled around on charred paws with a tag on his collar bearing the telephone number of an owner who had lost his home.

Shock, Then Tears

Laurie Cooper, 28, partially covered her face in shock as she arrived at her parents’ gutted home at 511 Emerald Bay Thursday morning.

“Oh my God,” she said, crying as she tentatively entered the million-dollar “dream home” that George and Micki Rach moved into after their wedding 18 months ago. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

As she searched for precious photos and other mementos, Cooper’s fingers grew dark with soot.

She found three photo albums filled with childhood memories. “They’re a little burned, but they’re OK,” she said. “Is that a miracle?”

A few hours later, the Rachs and their children climbed out of their car and stared in horror at the remains of their two-story, country-French-style house. Micki Rach, 51, hugged her daughter, Laurie, and stepdaughters, Stephanie, 25, and Kim, 21, as the women cried for several minutes outside of the house.

They searched for more items and emerged with their arms loaded: a portrait of George Rach’s three daughters and son that was painted in the 1970s, three teddy bears, and George’s and Micki’s wedding photos that were somehow untouched by the fire.

Outside on the sidewalk, a wooden rocking chair held a white evening dress trimmed in gold, and a sculpture Micki Rach had purchased earlier this month to serve as the centerpiece for her about-to-be-remodeled living room.

Despite the grim scene, George Rach, 56, said he considers himself lucky.

“I’ve got the family,” he said. “My daughters and my wife are safe, I’m safe. That’s all that counts. I looked at these pictures, and I thought, if anything should survive, that picture should, because it singles out the fact that you go on. Life goes on.”

At 513 Emerald Bay, children’s toys dotted the blackened lawn. Bicycles and a moped were reduced to macabre piles of twisted metal. Yet, a plastic Big John Tractor sat nearby in near-perfect condition, with only its tires melted.

Next door, at 515 Emerald Bay, the house stood--almost defiantly--but for the blackened American flag waving on the roof.

Hanging from the scorched branches of a citrus tree farther down the street were black balls of what once was fruit but now looks like coal.

Memories Survive

Across the canyon, Suzanne and Ted Paulson watched firefighters pour water on the litter scattered across their property.

They were perched at the edge of the ridge where the steps to their front door once stood. Had they leaned too far, they would have slid into a soggy mass of charred debris. There was no door, no walls, nothing. Just an unobstructed, smoky view of the ocean.

Gone was their world-class art collection, more than 150 pieces lovingly gathered from around the world. Gone was Suzanne’s business, an art-travel newsletter she published from home. Gone was the silver that had passed through generations of her family.

Almost nothing was recognizable except for the two three-foot-long metal sculptures, one of a bull and the other of a cow, that Suzanne and her stockbroker husband had commissioned a few years ago from a Napa Valley artist as an anniversary gift to themselves.

Ted Paulson, 59, had returned to his Emerald Bay home as the fire approached midday Wednesday and spent 90 minutes hosing down his roof rather than collecting his memories. Suzanne, 56, had not been allowed by law enforcement officers to return home.

“I didn’t take one thing,” a regretful Paulson said. “The dog was locked in the washroom, and that’s all I took . . . I didn’t know where to start. There was so much stuff. So many irreplaceable things from all over the world.”

Ted Paulson said he left his home because the flames were just a few yards away and police had ordered residents out of the area.

As he departed, Paulson said he saw firetrucks approaching. “I waited and waited and waited,” he remembered. “And then I heard a couple of bad noises, and I was not terribly optimistic when I left.”

Suzanne Paulson, 56, said she thought maybe the stucco house next door--just recently built--would serve as a fire break. But that structure also was swept away.

Two doors down, Helen Hawkins surveyed the remains of her daughter’s home. The scene was bittersweet for Hawkins, whose own home had survived the fire.

Still, she was hopeful about the neighborhood’s future.

“We will get together as a community and help each other,” Hawkins said. “We will go back to the old days. We are going to build the barn together again.”

‘It’s a Miracle’

Fate was kinder to Judy and Jim Bergman.

Jim Bergman, 51, a venture capitalist, had left Emerald Bay Wednesday morning bound for Cleveland on business. Hearing on a national newscast that his neighborhood was aflame, he immediately turned around and came back. He and his wife--unable to re-enter their neighborhood--spent the night with relatives in Anaheim and watched the raging fire on television.

“The time went so slowly,” Judy Bergman recalled.

But when they returned to Emerald Bay Thursday morning, their house was unharmed, except for the muddy footprints of firefighters who had trampled through to fight the fire from their balcony.

“I thank the Lord it’s still here,” Jim Bergman said. “It’s a miracle.”

Judy’s eyes filled with tears as she looked below their house, to the flattened home of some friends.

“Oh, my God! That house was brand new. They have four children,” she said.

Swimming Home

Closer to Coast Highway, Randy Lush, 46, arrived at his home midday Thursday with his hair and clothes wet from an ocean swim. It was the only way he could reach the neighborhood and avoid the police checkpoints. The frame of the house was still standing, but the foundation and roof had caved in. The only retrievable items were photographs.

While most residents fled the fire, some stubbornly stayed to fight.

DeeAnn Baldwin stayed and watched through a pair of binoculars as the fire approached. “The flames were 50 feet in the air,” she said. “I thought, ‘My God, it’s going to take the whole bay.’ ”

Baldwin said her husband and son hosed down the roofs of neighboring homes, since theirs is a tile roof.

Her husband, home builder Alfred Baldwin, was also forced to take his boat from Newport Harbor down the coast, then jump in the water and swim to shore.

“I’ve seen about 15 other boats do that today,” she said. “Mostly, they’re kids trying to reach their parents.”

Artist Andy Wing, 62, also refused to leave home Wednesday night, even while flames destroyed homes and blackened hillsides just feet from his parched back yard in Laguna Canyon.

But his stubbornness--and quick work with a hose--paid off: His home and storage shed filled with artwork supplies were unscathed.

“If you’ve lived in a place for 35 years, it’s your life,” said Wing, some of whose multimedia works are in Laguna Art Museum’s permanent collection. “I wasn’t about to desert my ship unless I was on fire.”

Tom Hummel, 60, an engineer, said he and a neighbor stayed overnight and fought the fire with garden hoses, saving seven houses in their area.

“We were ordered to leave, but we stayed,” said Hummel, angry that police had evacuated his neighborhood. “If we hadn’t, the whole cul-de-sac would have burned.”

Cheryl Young, 54, also defied the police evacuation order. Unable to connect with her husband, she sneaked back to her Emerald Bay home after being away about 45 minutes Wednesday afternoon, and regularly sprayed water on her roof.

“It’s hard to rejoice when we are so fortunate and these people have ashes,” Young said.

Despite the horrific fire, most said they would rebuild in the same area.

After 20 hours battling the blaze in the neighborhood where he himself lives, Orange County Fire Capt. Jim Waddell, 32, leaned against brick wall, his eyes red, his skin gray with soot.

“The only thing to do now,” said Waddell, whose house was not damaged by the fire, “is help these people out and see what we can do to reorganize and move on.”

Higher Standards

Rebuilding Emerald Bay will have to follow the community’s strict guidelines, said William R. McCrea, general manager for the development.

“We demand that every new remodeling or reconstruction involving a roof has to be Class A,” McCrea said, meaning that roofs must be made of slate, concrete, copper, or other fire-resistant material.

California Coastal Commission regulations that normally require homeowners of gated communities to provide public beach access before new permits can be issued won’t apply to the rebuilding effort in Laguna Beach or Emerald Bay, officials said.

Teresa Henry, assistant director of the Coastal Commission’s South Coast District, which covers Orange County and a large portion of Los Angeles County, said there’s a general clause in the state’s Coastal Act that exempts rebuilding efforts from the permit process.

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Times staff writers Zan Dubin, Anne Michaud, Jeffrey A. Perlman and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this report.