‘It Looked Like the Whole City Was on Fire’ : Newbury Park: Residents recall a harrowing evacuation. The blaze is the worst to hit the Thousand Oaks area in 37 years.

Despite the flames crashing toward her house, Julie Chattin tried to keep her tone matter-of-fact as she asked an insurance agent to sign her up for a renter’s policy.

As though her sudden desire for insurance coverage had nothing to do with the immense fire sweeping Newbury Park, she calmly described her home’s location on the rim of the Santa Monica Mountains. Meanwhile, the smoke and ash swirled around her home, blowing like a snowstorm.

Chattin suspects the insurance agent had an inkling about the fire--but nonetheless, she got the policy.

And just two hours after it kicked in at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Chattin and her family awoke to a sheriff’s deputy banging on the door and urging them to evacuate. Flames were crackling only a hundred yards from some lawns in their Deer Ridge tract.

What with the smell, the smoke and the fearsome orange flickers, the Chattins needed little encouragement to leave.

But they tried to remain calm, for the children’s sake. “We didn’t want them to think it was anything major,” Julie Chattin recounted, laughing at her attempt to downplay the worst fire to hit the Thousand Oaks area in 37 years.

Tossing a jumble of children’s artwork, rare coins and hand-me-down blankets into the car, the Chattins fled to a nearby Days Inn--where they soon spotted other refugees from the fire.

“You could tell from the cars, with all sorts of junk in them, cats roaming in the back seat, bird cages and everything else,” Chattin said.

The Days Inn might have been hectic, but at least it had beds.

Some residents from the Deer Ridge tract, where fewer than half a dozen homes were evacuated, headed to a makeshift shelter at Newbury Park High School--only to find it locked tight.

No one from the first set of Newbury Park homes evacuated--along upper Ventu Park Road, Rudolph Drive and McKnight Road--opted for the shelter, so Red Cross officials closed it about 10 p.m. Tuesday, shelter coordinator Richard Rink said.

When the second round of evacuations began at 2 a.m., around the Antelope Place cul-de-sac, Red Cross workers scrambled to reopen the Newbury Park shelter. But by the time they arrived at 3:45 a.m., all the residents who had huddled in the parking lot had left, Rink said.

A few stragglers came by in the early morning, but the shelter shut down again at 10 a.m., when Newbury Park homes were no longer in danger.

As bruise-colored smoke blotched the sky on Wednesday, Newbury Park residents reflected on their crazy evening and worried about the fires still sweeping through the acres of parkland near their homes. Meanwhile, car after car of wide-eyed spectators drove by to marvel at the close call.

“I guess we’ll be getting a lot of looky-loos,” Laura Dunn said.

Still shaken by their experience, many residents were eager to indulge the curious.

“It looked like the whole city was on fire,” Phyllis Weil said. “It was unbelievable--every where you went, there were flames.”

Or, in some cases, water.

When John Power tried to help a neighbor extinguish sparks in her back yard Wednesday morning, he happened to reach the hot spot just as a Fire Department helicopter was passing overhead. The copter followed him up the charred hillside and dumped two loads of water on the smoldering embers--dousing the blaze, and drenching Power.

Good-humored despite his unexpected shower, Power turned around to display the soaked back of his white T-shirt. “He’s a good shot,” Power said of the helicopter pilot. “I just ducked and he drenched everything around me.”

As he spoke, Power pointed to another small blaze that had sprouted on the hillside behind his back yard. Grabbing his shovel, he headed toward the flames.

While Power gamely headed to take the heat, most Newbury Park residents were content to observe from a distance--preferably, a very safe distance. Dozens of smoke-watchers clustered along Potrero Road, tracking the fire’s slow, steady progress and ooh-ing at the sudden, dramatic flare-ups.

Idled company cars lining the narrow road attested to the fire’s lure, as businessmen in suits stood next to repairmen sneaking time between service calls and students playing hooky from school.

Atop a charred hill just north of Potrero Road, three Newbury Park High School students aimed binoculars and cameras at the spectacle: acres and acres of backcountry that had sizzled to a stark soot.

As they watched, a mouse, singed and trembling, crept by the students’ feet. Hundreds of blackened beer bottles littered the ridgeline, exposed now that the scrubby chaparral had burned away. And nearby, a stinking, molten-hot husk of an abandoned car gave off intense heat and an acrid smell.

“I think I’ll try to keep a safe distance--I’m not too gutsy,” said Andy Szilagyi, an 18-year-old senior.

About 10% to 15% of Newbury Park High School’s students seized the fire as an excuse to stay away from school, and many more came to class late, administrator Mildred Andress said. To satisfy the teen-agers’ curiosity, some teachers let them roam over the charred hillsides during breaks.

After 24 hours of smoky air, flying soot and swirling winds, however, some Newbury Park residents were sick of the fire. And worried about what would come next.

When they returned to their home after a night at the Days Inn, the Chattins spied a fat, two-inch-long grasshopper clinging to their house right outside the door.

The insect refused to budge, leading Bob Chattin to muse: “What’s next? Locusts?”