COLUMN ONE : Brush Fire--It Sears Memories : Those who have survived the disasters often go beyond legal requirements to protect themselves from a repeat of the experience. Yet there are others who ignore the dangers.

As the brush fire raged through his Bel-Air neighborhood, licking at his wood-frame home, Bob Wulffsohn climbed to the roof and fought off the wind-driven flames with a garden hose.

“When it first hit here everything just lit up like a Christmas tree,” the 81-year-old retired aerospace worker said of the 1961 blaze that destroyed 484 homes and torched $30 million in property. “You couldn’t believe the roar and the sound.”

Wulffsohn saved his home, but was powerless to stop the flames from devastating his neighborhood. Vowing that it would not happen again, Wulffsohn and those neighbors who returned to rebuild their community installed sprinklers on their roofs and have remained extra vigilant about trimming vegetation around their homes.

Like Wulffsohn, those who have survived brush fires are extra cautious and often go beyond what the law requires to better their chances of surviving another disaster.

Others were so sensitized by the powerful television images of the blaze that destroyed portions of the Berkeley Hills that they have begun turning in neighbors who violate fire safety laws. Fire departments have reported dozens of such calls in the days since the Oakland blaze.

Still, in Southern California where brush-covered hillsides burn with regularity, the most disastrous events can fade from memory--particularly among those who arrive long after the communities have been rebuilt.

“The lessons of past disasters don’t stay for long,” said David Brown, vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Assn., an organization of homeowners in the Malibu hills, where brush fires are frequent. “We get people building on a ridge top, saying, ‘Oh, boy, I have a view of the ocean,’ and they don’t realize that they have an atomic bomb . . . below.”

Said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Mike Richey: “People get lazy when they think it can’t happen to them.”

In the 30 years since the Bel-Air blaze, Southern California has had at least 36 major brush fires that have killed 23 people, destroyed more than 2,100 structures, blackened about 800,000 acres and caused more than $627 million in damage. The wind-driven Oakland fire killed 24 people, charred 1,800 acres, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and caused about $1.5 billion in damage.

Partly as a result, compliance with fire safety laws is extraordinarily high in Los Angeles and the unincorporated county, according to fire officials. For example, 92% of the residents in the city’s hillside areas and 98% of county residents comply with laws that require brush to be clear of structures and roads.

“There is a different consciousness after a major fire,” said Richey, whose firefighters fought the 1989 Puente Hills fire that destroyed 13 homes and caused an estimated $4.3 million in damage.

Sheila Bauer, 79, who lives on Sky Lane in Bel-Air, said she will never forget the day in 1961 that her home burned to the ground. “You never get over it, not really,” said Bauer. For Bauer, the television news reports of the Oakland fire played like a rerun of her most frightening experiences. “It’s just that you suddenly have nothing,” she said.

Barbara Lee Fish, who replaced her shingles with fireproof roofing after the 1989 Puente Hills blaze damaged her home, said she did not need the events in Oakland to remind her about the fury of a major brush fire. “Every time the Santa Ana winds come up it brings it all back,” she said. “So, there is no peace of mind once you’ve experienced a community fire.”

Like many who have witnessed the power of a fast-moving brush fire, Claire and Ted Lamb added extra safety measures when they rebuilt their home after it was destroyed last year in the Glendale fire. They installed an indoor sprinkler system and a tile shingle roof, she said. And rather than simply trimming the trees along their hillside, they cut them down. “We were petrified,” Claire Lamb said.

Even so, Claire Lamb said she still has nightmares. “Every time I hear a fire engine go by I go outside and see where it is going,” she said.

Eric and Pat Turcke also took extra fire safety precautions after the 1989 Puente Hills blaze destroyed their home. After rebuilding, Eric Turcke said, he widened the clearance around his home by about 70 feet. It has been more than a year since the embers of that blaze have cooled, but the Turckes remain tense about the possibility of another fire.

“Every time we smell smoke we panic,” he said.

But some who have not suffered losses in a brush fire have a much more lackadaisical attitude.

As Wulffsohn stood on his porch in Bel-Air on a recent afternoon, he could see luxurious homes nearby with wood-shingle roofs and lush landscaping crowding up against brush-covered hillsides. “They don’t seem to be too concerned,” he said of some neighbors who moved to the pricey community long after the big fire.

In a brush-covered canyon half a mile away, Leonard Stern, whose wood-frame home survived the 1978 Mandeville Canyon fire that destroyed 230 homes and damaged 45 others, said he understands the dangers of wood-shingle roofs. Yet, he has not replaced the shake roof on his home, which sits at the bottom of two shrub-covered hills.

“Wood roofs are potentially dangerous, no doubt about it,” he said. “But that’s the breaks. One can’t prepare for everything.”

To a degree, the public’s willingness to take what often are costly steps to protect property and lives hinges on the actions of local government.

After nearly every conflagration, lawmakers rushed to tighten fire safety laws, leaving the county with an array of different regulations. But questions continue to be raised about the effectiveness of some of these measures.

After 15 homes were destroyed and 25 others were damaged in the 1989 Porter Ranch fire in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles adopted an ordinance banning all new wood-shingle roofs, treated or untreated. A similar ban was adopted that year in Glendale.

The wood shake and cedar shingle industry filed a federal court challenge against the Los Angeles ordinance, saying it is unfair to ban all wood shingles. The challenge is still pending.

The wood-shingle industry, seeking to protect a $50-million market in Southern California, has also produced numerous independent studies showing that treated shingles will retain their retardant nature for up to 30 years. But Los Angeles fire officials insist that the treated shingles remain a fire hazard.

Los Angeles County, Covina and Santa Clarita also adopted a wood-shingle ban in 1989 but exempted shake roofs that have been treated with fire retardant. The laws, however, do not prohibit use of wood shakes on existing structures, only on new structures and those that are being remodeled.

The legality of the wood-shingle bans was called into question in the fall of 1989 when the state attorney general issued an opinion declaring that cities do not have authority to impose fire codes more stringent than those of the state.

After the Oakland fire, however, a wood-shingle trade group announced that it would drop its longtime opposition to a statewide ban on untreated wood shingles.

Industry officials estimated that wood roofing material is in place on about 1.5 million homes in and around Los Angeles, which is considered the largest market in the world for cedar shake roofs.

In addition to eliminating wood roofs, firefighters say clearing brush and other vegetation from around structures and roads is a key in the fight against brush fires.

After the Glendale fire, the City Council adopted a tough new brush clearance ordinance that allowed firefighters to inspect and remove all vegetation that could fuel a brush fire or ignite a structure. Today, officials say 98% of Glendale’s 10,000 hillside homes comply with the measure, compared to about 60% of residents who had voluntarily kept their shrubs and weeds trimmed before the fire. Such laws are in place in the city and county of Los Angeles.

About 7 million people in California live in urban wildlife areas, according to a spokeswoman for the state fire marshal, who predicted that the number will swell to 10 million within the next decade.

Los Angeles officials are now studying a proposed ordinance which, among other things, would improve access for emergency vehicles on narrow roads in the city’s hillside neighborhoods. The measure, which is expected to face a City Council vote by the end of the year, also would require new homes and some being remodeled to include sprinkler systems to provide additional fire protection in remote areas.

But, some of those who have witnessed a major fire disaster say that safety precautions such as fireproof roof tiles and fire breaks around structures can do little to slow the onslaught of a major wind-driven brush fire.

Puente Hills resident Elizabeth Lukather said he remembers how the 1989 blaze leveled a small tile-roof cottage on her property. “The only thing left was a ceramic cup, and two twisted lumps of steel. One was the refrigerator and the other was the stove,” she said, adding that a neighbor’s Porsche was reduced to an 18-inch-tall pile of melted metal.

She said firefighters later told her that the flames traveled at 70 m.p.h. and were as hot as 2,000 degrees. “We had taken every precaution that you could take,” she said. “But it’s almost like a tornado when it comes through.”

Grant Gerson, who operates a ranch in the Malibu hills, said he believes that the 1978 Agoura-Malibu fire that destroyed nearly 200 homes and blackened 25,000 acres would not have been slowed much by such precautions.

“That was one of those kind of fires that was uncontrollable,” said Gerson, who lost a house to the blaze. When a firestorm comes, he added, it creates its own momentum.

Still, Gerson said he has seen many newcomers buy homes in the wooded hillsides overlooking the Pacific and worries that they do not take fire safety seriously.

“A lot of city people move into this area and they don’t clear their area,” he said. “When you clear it you have a much better chance of saving your house.”

Los Angeles City Fire Battalion Chief Dean Cathy provided an example that he said demonstrates the effectiveness of fire safety laws. Last year, he said, an arsonist ignited a brush fire at the exact site where the Baldwin Hills fire was started in 1985. The previous fire had flashed up a brushy hillside and destroyed 48 homes, damaged numerous others and left more than 300 people homeless.

But because the brush had been cleared from roadsides and structures, Cathy said, firefighters were able to douse the most recent fire before it threatened any structures. “The compliance has been the key,” he said.

Los Angeles County Fire Capt. William Hoffman agreed, saying that the chances of surviving a brush fire are increased by almost 100% when brush is cleared from around a house.

“But it seems you’ve got to go through one of those things once before it makes a believer out of you,” he said.

BACKGROUND

In the city of Los Angeles, there are about 108,000 properties in the mountain fire district that must follow brush clearing laws. Last year, the city hired contractors to clear brush from about 800 properties owned by people who failed to clear the brush. The city charges property owners for the clearing cost and an administrative fee. Los Angeles County inspects about 47,000 properties in the unincorporated areas and in 59 cities that contract with the county for brush abatement. Last year, the county cleared the brush on about 8,000 properties where the owners failed to do so.

Before a Disaster Strikes

In the event of a fire or other disaster, a room-by-room inventory of your household furnishings and personal belongings can help document any losses to police, the IRS or to your insurance company. This will help settle your insurance claim quickly and verify losses for income tax deductions. Here are some suggestions to help in that process: * Make a list of major items in every room. Note the serial numbers (usually found on the bottom or back of major appliances) and purchase prices. Attach receipts or purchase dates where possible.

* To back up the written inventory, photograph each wall of each room (leaving closet and cabinet doors open).

* Write the date, the general location and contents shown on the back of each picture.

* Store the written inventory and photographs in a safe place away from home (your office or a safe deposit box, for example).

* Keep a copy of the inventory at home to update occasionally.

* List the construction materials used in building your house, both inside and out. This can help with the assessment of a partly burned house, which is not unusual.

SOURCE: Western Insurance Information Service

Compiled by researcher Tracy Thomas