FACES OF THE FIRE : Now Playing: ‘The Surreal Live Monster That Ate Laguna’

Almost immediately, I scribbled the word surreal in my notebook after getting my first glimpse of Laguna Beach on Thursday morning.

It’s certainly not the most original or most imaginative word, because you could argue that the word always fits the town. But on this first morning after the fire that scared the city out of its wits, it was the only word that seemed appropriate.

Maybe I’ve seen too many disaster flicks, but Main Beach resembled nothing if not one giant film location.

Onlookers stood across the Coast Highway, watching the scene on the cordoned-off section of beach as if waiting for a director to yell, “Take your places, everyone!” Police cars and firetrucks lined the street, and helicopters were beached in the background. Just enough surf and sea birds provided the right touch of local color. As on most movie sets, most of the action consisted of people--in this case, reporters and emergency workers--milling around.

Elsewhere downtown, the city was pretty much shut down. A poster for a coming attraction at the downtown theater touted “Remains of the Day.” The Jolly Roger restaurant was open, but mostly, it seemed, to serve firefighters and reporters. Downtown, which at one point Wednesday evening was feared to be a goner because of encroaching flames, was wholly intact, but a look up into the hills behind the shopping district revealed how close disaster had crept. The hill directly behind the City Hall complex was nothing but scorched earth, and only a fool wouldn’t have been nervous as the fire swooped down.

Late morning Thursday, Doug Black was hosing down the sidewalk outside the Wyland Collections gallery downtown. The day before, he had looked north up the Coast Highway and seen the fire literally climb over the ridge as if making a beeline for the city.

“It was very real and very scary,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever used the words surreal or unreal as much as I did yesterday,” he said.

I told him I had the same thoughts after seeing the eerie calm of this first morning after, but Black said it applied more on Wednesday as townspeople feared the worst. “Maybe it’s just because this is an artists’ community, but I swear, surreal was the most used word yesterday,” Black said. “There was just no other word to describe it.”

“Oh, Christ, you guys know how to make a mountain out of a molehill,” a guy up the street in the Laundromat said to me a few minutes later.

“Come on,” I told him, “this was a pretty big deal.”

The guy said a friend had telephoned him yesterday and said news reports made it sound like Laguna Beach was burning to the ground like Chicago once did. The man said he never really panicked and that, as a matter of fact, he wished “the wind would kick up so it would blow this smoke out. I was eating breakfast at the Jolly Roger this morning and my eyes were burning out of my head.”

Ruth and Richard Smith were relaxing just south of the cordoned-off Main Beach site, thankful that their home in the Top of the World neighborhood had survived. To make sure, they had phoned their answering machine, and it talked to them. “We phoned home this morning and it rang, so we figure the house is still there,” Richard Smith said.

The Smiths were evacuated Wednesday afternoon, and on their way down to town saw burning houses that they always see on their walks. “It was scary, any way you slice it,” Ruth Smith said.

“The fire looked like it was racing up the hill, and there was no way to stop it,” Richard Smith said. He also noted wryly that residents have been petitioning for a reservoir on the top of the hill in their neighborhood. “I don’t think we’ll have much trouble getting it now,” he said.

Across the street from Main Beach, David Carlson was semi-seriously lauding his friend, Mark Golter, for his “heroic” efforts in saving their music recording studio in Laguna Canyon. Golter said he stood on the roof of the two-story building for about two hours and, with the help of Southern California Edison workers, fought off the fire with a hose.

“We had 50 grand worth of equipment in there,” Golter said. “I wasn’t about to let it go up in flames.”

Golter said he was surprised to wake up Thursday and see so much of Laguna Beach still standing.

But if any of us wonder whether Laguna Beach residents will get back to normal, Golter may ease our minds.

“Too bad there’s no waves today,” he said. “We’ve got to find something to do.”