FACES OF THE FIRE : Heroes Stood Taller Than the Flames : Response: Through the chaos and terror of the firestorm come stories of selfless heroism and acts of volunteerism.

Lives were forever altered and homes destroyed, but through the chaos and terror of the firestorms came stories of volunteerism and remarkable acts of heroism.

Colleen Del Pizzo screamed through the heavy smoke to warn neighbors of approaching fire; Craig Caputo, grieving the loss of his own home, risked his life to save others, and Carl Godfrey, finding a shelter with no food, scoured the town and returned with 65 pizzas.

Others provided smaller acts of kindness in the face of tragedy. Some, like John McDonald, directed traffic, doused hot spots with garden hoses and worked side by side with firefighters, whose own efforts could only be described by many as heroic.

“I’m just glad we live in a country in which a response like this is so great,” said Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Laguna Beach. “I can’t say enough about the commitment and dedication that I’ve seen in these firefighting people.”

Many in the community came forward without even hearing a call for help.

Officials at a Red Cross shelter at Dana Hills High School say hotels, restaurants and supermarkets have created care packages of boxed dinners, lunches and toiletries. Edwards Theaters has handed out free movie tickets to evacuees to ease their tension.

“The community has just been incredible,” said Tom Anthony, an administrator with the Capistrano Unified School District who has worked around the clock with Dana Hills Principal Rickie Lundgren at the shelter. “The list of thank-you’s is going to take forever.”

Mark Intinarelli, 39, was watching the fire about 4 p.m. Wednesday when he noticed the flames burning perilously close to the famed Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts grounds, including the Tivoli Terrace and Irvine Bowl.

Seeing no fire crews nearby, Intinarelli and a dozen volunteers, including reserve firefighters, grabbed hoses from the festival grounds and started dousing the area off Laguna Canyon Road, preventing the flames from advancing.

But their work was not over.

“When the fire jumped Laguna Canyon Road, we followed it,” Intinarelli said.

Soon flames moved behind the city’s main fire station, threatening a neighborhood on Y Place. There, they found a musician with a garden hose making a last-ditch stand against flames only 20 feet from his home.

Intinarelli and the little band of volunteers ran to the fire station, where they were allowed to take a hose to Y Place and save the house.

At the peak of the fire, Colleen Del Pizzo, 24, loaded her personal belongings in her car on Locust Street, high in the Laguna Beach foothills.

Flames licked at her neighbors’ back yards, setting fire to their trees and shrubs. A deafening roar rose from the 50-m.p.h. winds and fire. Still, some neighbors stubbornly stayed put, deciding to fight the fast-moving fire with garden hoses and moxie.

Del Pizzo rushed up her street where homes were threatened, screaming, “Get out! Get out!”

When some told her they wanted to remain on their roofs, she said, “No! You have to leave now ! I mean it, get out now!” She persisted until the men climbed down, got into their cars and left.

With devastation all around, some still found a reason to smile.

After hearing about the fire, the Balboa Beach Big Band of Irvine showed up Wednesday night at the Red Cross Shelter at Corona del Mar High School.

Soon they were serenading the 30 or so evacuees with “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and other tunes.

“This is the first time ever I’ve been at a fire and seen a band show up,” said a smiling Red Cross worker.

Thanks to a complete stranger they dubbed a hero, Caty Simmons and Alistair Cullum’s Laguna Canyon home survived a rapacious fire that took the house next door and a string of homes across the street.

Simmons, an Irvine Valley College financial aid officer, and Cullum, a UC Irvine graduate student, were stranded in Irvine on Wednesday. But while they stayed overnight with friends, Laguna Beach resident Ron Ellis, whom they had never met, hosed down their Canyon Acres Drive home and others nearby, Simmons said Thursday.

“We had a hero (save the house) for us,” she said. “A thousand thanks to Ron Ellis for being here.”

For Firefighter Ray Larkins, the 3 a.m. pause Thursday was his first rest in more than 40 hours. Larkins started work at 8 a.m. Tuesday and was dispatched to the Anaheim Hills fire that night.

“That was probably the biggest brush fire I’ve ever fought,” Larkins said. Until he went to Laguna Beach.

“This,” he said, “is more fire than I’ve ever seen.”

The 30-year-old firefighter said he fought the Anaheim fire all night Tuesday then was dispatched to Laguna Beach at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

He seemed to take it in stride.

“I’m tired, just like everyone else is,” he said.

But if he had to, Larkin said, he would do the job again “in a minute.”

He lost his own home, but that didn’t stop Craig Caputo, 22, from helping others in Laguna Beach as the fires raged Wednesday.

Caputo said he saw the fire’s beginning, on the side of Laguna Canyon Road.

“It was so small in the morning, you’d have never known it would become like this,” he said.

Eventually, the fire took his house, and Caputo fled to the home of his boss, Bobby Friedman, a tile and marble contractor in Dana Point. But the two men, watching the carnage on television, “couldn’t stand it,” Friedman said.

“We decided to go help people. When you just see houses burn on TV, you don’t think much about it,” said Friedman, 32. “But when you know someone who’s living in it, it hits home.”

Using skateboards to get into the area, they did what they could to help.

One person who needed help was 69-year-old Betty Gallagher, who was trying to save her home of more than 60 years. She had been watering her house all day, but it dried out too fast.

And her homeowner’s insurance had been canceled two years ago because the house was so old, she said.

Using a hose to extinguish hot spots, the men took over the job of guarding Gallagher’s lifelong home.

John McDonald, 35, a South Laguna resident, jumped into his car and drove into Laguna Beach to help as soon as he heard about the fire Wednesday morning.

Eyes watering from smoke, McDonald said he spent part of the day helping firefighters move their heavy hoses, then directed traffic and later helped people in a neighborhood rescue valuables from their homes.

At the same time, John Gaines of Laguna Niguel also was offering help to fire victims. Armed with a shovel, Gaines looked for burning embers. He said he planned to work alongside firefighters as long as he could.

“I did this in Boy’s Camp,” he said. “It’s easy to remember.”

Looking for some way to help, Carl Godfrey, 47, of San Juan Capistrano stopped by Dana Hills High School on Wednesday evening where a shelter had been set up by the Red Cross.

“They had just evacuated a lot of the children from Laguna Beach High School,” Godfrey said. “They were in there with no food, drinks or anything. It was kind of like a zoo. So I just turned around and said, ‘What needs to be done?’ ”

The answer was clear: Get some food.

Godrey made his way to Price Club, Pizza Hut and Domino’s Pizza in Dana Point.

“Literally everyone bent over backward for me,” he said. “Between these three locations, they cooked up 65 pizzas within two hours.”

Godfrey has since helped ensure deliveries of milk, diapers and toiletries to the shelter.

“I plan to help as long as they need my help,” he said.

Brothers Jeff Day and Dave Day had been up late Wednesday pouring water on their houses--Jeff in Aliso Viejo and Dave on the south end of Laguna Beach. But they agreed that if their homes were safe by early morning, they would get into their Coffee Express van and drive to the command center at Main Beach to offer free coffee to police and firefighters.

At about 4 a.m., they told the California Highway Patrol officer at a roadblock they were bound for Main Beach, and the officer waved them through.

When they arrived, the brothers pressed their four coffee grinders into duty.

Their arrival, it turned out, was timely. The Red Cross van there ran out of coffee at 5:30 a.m.

“These guys are great; they saved our butts when we ran out of coffee,” said Jonathan Gilbert, a Red Cross volunteer from Huntington Beach.

In about five hours, the Days’ coffee van went through 20 pounds of coffee beans.

“Espressos and cappuccinos on the front line, that’s a first,” said Dave Day.

Although many of the firefighters asked for only straight coffee, the Days served them vanilla hazelnut, chocolate macadamia nut and Costa Rican coffees.

“We’ve had people coming up to us, saying, ‘Only in Laguna Beach.’ ”

Times staff writers Jeff Brazil, Leslie Berkman, Rene Lynch, Zan Dubin, Kevin Johnson and David Reyes and correspondents Frank Messina, Richard Core and Willson Cummer contributed to this story.