The Laguna Fire: Looking Back From a Number of Viewpoints

As I videotaped the firestorm approaching Newport Beach--and my home--I felt considerable anger toward the amateur ecologists of our area. The activities of this group have contributed greatly to the difficulty of providing the needed controlled burns as well as adequate roads and highways for access end egress.

It is a matter of luck that there were no fatalities. The potential for human deaths was very real, as was the actual damage to homes. No amount of concern for small birds will diminish the moral responsibility of any group that takes an unbalanced and unscientific approach to societal problems.

The “Smokey the Bear” syndrome kept our national parks from remaining healthy by preventing or stopping needed fires. For example, redwoods cannot produce seedlings without “cool fires.” Such fires (which do not damage mature trees) need periodic burns to keep the dry material from excessive buildup.

Ecological concerns must be embedded in systems analyses which involve risk/reward factors for all actions. For example, environmental impact studies should be required for a lack of action--such as failure to have controlled burns when they are clearly a necessity.

GILBERT M. EDELMAN

Newport Beach

* Thanks to the newspaper delivery person.

Thanks to the mail person.

Thanks to our police and those who assisted them.

And a special thanks to our Fire Department and all the firefighters from wherever they came.

ROBERT ROCCHIO

Laguna Beach

* It is a tragedy, but no surprise, that the conservative element seized an opportunity to pitch their agenda for growth and development at any cost immediately after the flames destroyed much of Laguna Beach.

The article “Laguna Disaster Raises Outcry Against Liberals” (Nov. 1) suggests that blame for the fire’s devastation be imparted on the current City Council. The fire was not caused by the council’s defense of social cases and their ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. It was caused by an arsonist.

Would it be better to surrender our concern for people and the environment and pave over the entire city in cement so brush fires would not occur? If that were to happen, the city would sink from the weight of greedy land developers at the expense of all of us.

MITCHELL GOLDSTONE

Irvine

* “Laguna Is Left in Ashes,” your Thursday morning headline (Oct. 28), and “Dear Laguna”--poppycock! Before midnight Wednesday, Oct. 28, we could tell that the Laguna Beach we all know was still there: lower Broadway of the festivals, the Laguna Playhouse and the Coast Highway with its shops, cafes and hotels. And the City Hall.

Your minor headline the next morning, “Digging for Hope Amid Ruins of a Charred City” (Oct. 29) still badly misinforms your readers who don’t read the fine print. Laguna Beach, as most of us know it, is still there! Sure, we’re sorry about those who lost their hillside homes--those in Altadena too--but the real Laguna Beach is still there.

You must distinguish between old and new. You owe Laguna Beach a sincere apology.

S.C. CLARK

Laguna Hills

* I am writing to express my disgust at some people who have criticized the work of the Fire Department during the recent Laguna Beach fire.

As I was evacuating from my house, I looked back at my home of 15 years to see fire approaching it from two directions. I knew I would never seen it again. The next day I learned it had indeed caught fire but had been saved by courageous men and women of Orange County Fire Department Station 222, Laguna Hills. They held the line facing gusts of fire up to 60 feet to save a lifetime of memories of total strangers. How many of those critics would have done the same?

Brush fires have always been the dark side of living in our beautiful canyons, yet some homeowners resist clearing brush and campaign(ed) against Proposition 172. Ironically, I saw a burned-out auto with a “No on 172” sticker. I wonder what that person’s opinion is now?

Laguna Beach is a special place and we will come back. The brush will be back, too, reminding us never to take our good fortune for granted.

KEA SIMON

Laguna Beach

* I am saddened that some special interests in our community are using the fire as another excuse to attack the City Council.

These same critics are landowners and others who would benefit from more development, who poured between $50,000 and $60,000 into last year’s council race to help elect two council members and prevent the election of a reasonable-growth candidate. They are working to get the next City Council to allow Treasure Island Trailer Park in South Laguna to be turned into a condominium or housing development. They are supported by those who want tax dollars spent on roads, housing and infrastructure that support additional development. The Laguna Coalition and the Laguna Taxpayers Assn. are groups who criticize the City Council and such organizations as Village Laguna without showing their true agendas.

I am curious about a couple of issues, though. Why hasn’t the water district candidly explained that even under the best circumstances, the proposed Top of the World reservoir would not have been completed until 1995, even given the total cooperation of the city? Why has the water district waited to build the pipeline to serve Top of the World that could have doubled the amount of water available to fight the fires? Is it because the district wanted to tie it to its proposed new 3-million-gallon water tank on the knoll at the end of Alta Laguna to get that project approved, despite the potential harm the lack of the pipeline might cause? Why didn’t the district go ahead and build the 600,000-gallon tank facility planned at the north edge of the parking lot at Alta Laguna park when it has had approval to do so for years?

These are the kinds of issues that need to be addressed by local officials and the elected Laguna Beach County Water District board of directors--not why the City Council allowed shrubs and trees near houses.

DOUGLAS C. REILLY

Laguna Beach

* After watching Tahiti Street, Caribbean Street and Park Avenue Canyon burn from a quarter-mile distance for one hour, I returned through the dying flames to find my house still standing between the smoldering remains of Dr. Hoffman’s on the east and 50-foot-high flames of the Sands’ family home on the west. I approached the firemen standing idle on Tahiti Street and asked them to try and save my house, which was only then beginning to burn along the east eaves of the roof. I was told there was no water pressure. I had to stand and watch a small fire on my house spread into the attic and consume our home.

I have accepted that we have lost our home, but I am angered that our City Council functioning majority, Robert Gentry, Lida Lenney and Ann Christoph, and their predecessors (all products of the Village Laguna political machine) have, for over a decade, pursued their narrow social and environmental agenda, clearly at the expense of the most basic function of city government: public safety and police and fire protection.

This group, when presented with the facts of the Oakland Hills fire on three different occasions, chose not only to ignore the professionals’ advice to increase the water capacity, they took no action whatsoever to prepare this city for the eventuality of a major canyon fire. They have opposed such an increase on the thinnest of environmental reasons. No water capacity increase, no evacuation plan, no firebreak improvements (unless you consider 50 goats chewing the grass a fire prevention effort).

FRANK BOWER

Laguna Beach

* The firestorm was already uncontrollable before it reached Laguna.

Why? Many years’ accumulation of brush had been allowed to pile up in the meadows and “wild” areas to the northeast of Laguna. This firebomb should have been removed by controlled burns on foggy windless mornings so that small fires could be kept small.

This didn’t happen and probably won’t happen to the remaining firebomb because this area has become “precious habitat” for real or imagined “endangered species.” The radical environmentalists are using this “precious habitat” as an excuse to block the construction of a highway through this area.

Controlled burns would damage some of the habitat of the kangaroo rat, etc., but are preferable in my mind to the destruction of $500 million in elegant habitat for the mellow humans of Laguna.

RON GREIM

Orange

* Did I read (T. Jefferson) Parker’s account (“Optimism and Dread in a Grand Canyon” Oct. 31) correctly? While Laguna Beach burned, while firefighters risked their lives, while people were rendered homeless, while wildlife fled in terror, he and his Laguna Canyon neighbors had a potluck dinner and watched the “excitement” from his balcony? I guess it would have been too much to expect him to do something more supportive or productive, especially when he was in the midst of fielding important Hollywood phone calls about the big movie deal on his novel.

Heavens, Mr. Parker. It’s one thing to be completely insensitive and egregiously egoistic. It’s another thing to flaunt such appalling shortcomings right on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

A.M. WILSON

Costa Mesa

* Of all the outrageous statements made during and after the Laguna Beach fire, the Grand Prize surely goes to the mean and opportunistic remarks made by representatives of United (sic!) Laguna and the Laguna Coalition--especially by Ann and Bill McDonald.

One may well be critical of various actions or inactions of the current Laguna Beach City Council, including the sorry and misguided dithering over the new reservoir. However, it is intolerable to allege, as do the McDonalds and others, that some City Council members should face a recall election on the spurious grounds that council “liberals” are responsible for the devastation of this fire.

Regardless of any personal political inclinations, all Laguna Beach residents should henceforth remember both United Laguna and the Laguna Coalition as civic groups who, in the midst of a heartbreaking tragedy that has affected the entire community, offer neither solace, assistance, understanding nor compassion, but rather vicious accusation, personal invective, slander and discord.

Laguna Beach voters should decisively repudiate any recall attempts and at the next election remember United Laguna and the Laguna Coalition as the jackals they so obviously are--with apologies to jackals.

PETER MORRISON

Laguna Beach

* Mark Boster’s striking photograph that dramatized the special report “Dear Laguna” (Oct. 28) held special significance for the fifth-graders that I teach in Corona del Mar. It showed a Newport Beach fireman, Terry Teale, on the roof of a home in Emerald Bay, putting his life on the line to try to save the house--a house which could easily have been the home of a number of the students at our school.

Just a few weeks ago, Terry came to school, as he has done for the past several years, to teach fire safety to the fifth-grade classes as part of the statewide Junior Fire Marshal program. In one short period, he is able to instill in them the things they must know if they are ever trapped when fire strikes.

Terry Teale, you are our hero today. You make a difference. We salute you and congratulate you for going the extra mile to volunteer your time to help everyone in our community to be aware of how to react in a fire, while still being on the front line fighting fires.

JUDY d’ALBERT

Costa Mesa

* The great Laguna Beach fire is a very dramatic demonstration of the narrow, limited and potentially destructive power of the media when reporting natural disasters. Anyone outside of Laguna saw TV screens full of dramatic scenes showing fires raging out of control and newspaper headlines declaring the complete destruction of Laguna.

I was horrified when hearing the reports of the incredible devastation while on a day trip to a conference in Phoenix. Upon getting the terrifying news from my hotel TV that fire storms were sweeping through all of Laguna I prepared for the worst--my home and business were gone and the children’s schools were in ashes. I raced to the airport to catch the first flight back to Laguna and my children who were being evacuated. My worst nightmare seemed confirmed as I stared out the plane window at the angry red fire blazing along the Orange County coast.

As one of the first Laguna residents to be let into the “devastated” town the afternoon following the fire, I was amazed and enormously relieved to find our home and business completely unscathed. As I drove through the evacuated town I felt a growing sense of wonder that the entire hill on which we lived, the children’s school, the entire downtown area and surrounding business sections were untouched by fire. Slowly my relief started to be replaced with an anger toward the media for narrowly exploiting the dramatic news and completely ignoring the fuller truth of the situation. The story was overwhelmingly one of survival rather than destruction.

Why had none of the TV channels or newspapers reported the overwhelming larger story of Laguna’s survival? With the terror of 25,000 displaced residents and untold numbers of friends who were inundated with arresting news reports of complete and heart-wrenching devastation, was there not a duty and responsibility of the media to show a fuller, balanced picture of the actual fire damage?

I recommend that:

* The disaster area should form a media committee to assist outside reporters by providing knowledgeable spokespersons and to actively support balanced reporting.

* Reporting include a balanced picture of what has been damaged and not damaged.

* Media reporters partner with local residents who are knowledgeable about the geography as well as social and cultural aspects of the disaster area.

HARRY K. WEXLER

Laguna Beach