Frantic Parents Seek Young at Fire Evacuation Centers

Nancy Carri fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her 11-year-old son, Colin, oblivious to the hundreds of other evacuees in near panic around her at Dana Hills High School.

“I was frantic,” she said later. “I didn’t know where he was.”

Colin, more composed, stroked his mother’s hair and tried to console her. “It’ll be all right,” he said.

Like many parents who arrived at the evacuation center Wednesday, Carri had spent several hours frantically trying to find her son. Her husband was at their Crescent Bay home, which at that time had survived the wildfires raging through Laguna Beach.

Carri first tried Laguna Beach High School, where 1,000 students evacuated from a preschool and three elementary schools initially were taken. But when Laguna Beach High was threatened by fire, the Red Cross designated Dana Hills High School as its main evacuation center, and Carri went there in search of her son.

At Dana Hills High, volunteers grouped children by their schools and placed them in front of televisions tuned to cartoons and kid shows. Live news broadcasts of burning homes were kept off the screens.

Senior citizens and other adults were directed to quiet, side rooms, away from the noisier children’s section.

“I’ve been very impressed with the children,” said Linda Ozden, a teacher at Top of the World Elementary School, which was evacuated about 1:30 p.m. “They’ve been very brave. We talked about it giving them a lot of journal material for the next six months.”

Leslie Schmalcried, an 8-year-old Top of the World third-grader, said: “I was scared. I was really scared. I got sorta scared as we drove away. Then I wasn’t so scared.”

From time to time, Dana Hills drama teacher Mark Dressler called out the names of children whose parents had arrived to pick them up. Meanwhile, long lines formed at pay phones as children tried to call parents to let them know where they were.

While the smaller children were caught up in the excitement--topping each other with made-up stories of how their houses had burned--teary-eyed high school girls held hands, trying to joke that they wouldn’t get their homework done.

People snacked on potato chips and fruit punch, while others consumed dinners of pasta and pizza and Mexican food provided by the Red Cross. As night fell, a steady stream of people came and went from the center, seeking the meals.

As night fell, volunteers filled the nearby gymnasium with cots and blankets, preparing for the more than 250 guests they expected, even as they began to discuss opening another location for what seemed certain to be an overflow crowd.