Fire Cancels Seminar for Youths : Retreat: Arsonist burns down meeting hall, dining room and offices at camp where teens were to meet.

Plans to take teen-agers away from the fire-ravaged inner city today to discuss improved race relations were canceled Monday after an arsonist burned down the mountain retreat where the seminar was to be held.

Fire destroyed the main meeting hall, a 200-seat dining room and offices at Camp Hollywoodland, a 66-year-old summer camp hidden in a canyon beneath the famed “Hollywood” sign.

City parks officials who run the camp said the fire also puts in jeopardy a series of weeklong summer camp-outs for girls that would draw hundreds of youngsters from the riot-devastated South-Central Los Angeles area.

Camp employees said the fire was apparently unrelated to rioting and arson that followed the not guilty verdicts for four policemen in the Rodney King beating case. They speculated that a burglar who broke into the camp’s rambling, mountain lodge-like building Sunday morning apparently returned around midnight to set the fire.

“This would have been a good place for people to get away from the despair that we have in our city,” said Adonna Jackson, who has worked as a gardener at the camp for 17 years. “But not now.”

Added Arnetta Robinson, who has worked as an activity director at the camp for 12 years: “The kids in South-Central have no place to go. This was a little bit of the country--a neutral place for them. I feel like somebody took a match and burned down my own house.”

Parks officials had not tallied the losses late Monday. Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigator Frank Oglesby said the cause was under investigation.

Firefighters who rushed from nearby Hollywood with an escort of California Highway Patrolmen and National Guardsmen were able to save a corner of the building that contained the camp’s kitchen. The camp’s 11 sleeping cabins are about 100 yards away and also escaped damage.

“I was thinking about all the businesses destroyed last week when I got up this morning,” said Rozeta Everett, who has worked as a camp cook for six years. “I told myself, ‘Well, at least I have a job.’ Then I get here and find my job is burned out too.”

Gary Baer, who was named Camp Hollywoodland director a month ago and is scheduled to move this week into a camp caretaker’s house next to the destroyed hall, said officials will try to repair the kitchen and rent a dining tent so at least part of this summer’s camp schedule can be salvaged.

That will take some scrambling, however. After digging through the rubble, camp workers Lewis Casto and Jose Madrigal discovered that computerized records, all printed copies of the 1992 summer schedule and an extensive collection of photographs taken at past summer camps were destroyed.

Girls who have enjoyed past summer outings at Camp Hollywoodland were heartsick to learn of the fire.

“You’re totally away from the city up there. It’s a great place for kids from throughout the city to meet and get to know each other,” said Anne Damrow, 22, of Chatsworth, who attended camp in 1980.

Today’s human relations seminar was planned by Los Angeles school officials for 72 youngsters from Washington High School, located a few miles from the intersection where the riots began. Assistant Principal Moses Green said the daylong retreat was designed to give youngsters a better understanding of others.

Twelfth-grader Olivia Miles, 18, said the cancellation was another disappointment at a time that has been filled with them. “We were going to learn about other people up there,” Miles said. “If people got along better, maybe the things we’ve seen wouldn’t have happened.”