FACES OF THE FIRE : Neighbors Find More Than Temporary Shelter : Support: At three Red Cross facilities, volunteers and evacuees give each other comfort and aid. Amid the earliest relief efforts, the displaced vow to rebuild.

About 1 a.m. Thursday, John Hallen suddenly found out what it feels like to be homeless. That’s when somebody told him that his house had burned.

As it did many others who fled the firestorm and sought refuge in three temporary Red Cross shelters, the experience left Hallen, 62, shaken and confused.

“It’s a shock,” he said, adding that he and his wife “lost everything except what we’re wearing.”

There were tears in his eyes as he stood amid hundreds of people milling around the tables and cots at the makeshift overnight shelter at Dana Hills High School on Thursday.

But he vowed to rebuild his devastated ranch house on 3 1/2 acres in the Rancho Carrillo community off Ortega Highway, one of 12 houses in that 65-home neighborhood destroyed by fire. Hallen had lived there seven years.

“We have a fantastic community, all helping each other,” Hallen said.

It was that kindred spirit--steadfast in tragedy--that filled the Dana Hills High School, Corona del Mar High School and Mission Viejo’s Saddleback College campuses Thursday. While students continued their classroom routines around them, the refugees crammed into other parts of the schools.

Thanks to the scores of volunteers from the Red Cross and local businesses who brought in a constant stream of donated food and clothing, there was an overwhelming feeling that, despite the disaster, help was everywhere.

Bulletin boards posted messages from families and offers of overnight shelter in private homes. People played cards, watched television, sorted through stacks of clean donated clothing and shared stories, some of relief, others of the horror of losing everything.

“It has been inspirational here all night,” said Kay Ostensen, a guidance counselor at Laguna Beach’s Thurston Middle School, which was damaged in the fire. She said she hardly slept but spent the night at Dana Hills with a group of students she had escorted to the campus on a school bus.

“Everyone helped each other keep their chins up. There are just so many wonderful people here,” Ostensen said.

The turnout was smaller at Corona del Mar High School, where about 20 people--most of them from Laguna Beach’s El Moro Mobile Home Park and Emerald Bay communities--spent the night in the gymnasium, and another 50 arrived during the day Thursday.

More would have come if they could have gotten through closed roads, said site manager Pat Elliott, who also supervises the Orange County Social Services Agency.

Just as at Dana Hills, volunteers at Corona del Mar, some of them students, worked for hours answering phones, registering evacuees and family members looking for their relatives and “running and fetching,” Elliott said.

At Dana Hills, students and evacuated residents began arriving between 4 and 5 p.m. Wednesday, said Robert LeGallee of Newport Beach, American Red Cross’ district coordinator for disaster services. About 400 students went to the Dana Point campus by bus, but most were released to their parents--once people found each other--and did not spend the night in the gym, LeGallee said.

Many of the elderly residents were sequestered from the din of the loudspeakers and the bright lights, where they were monitored, LeGallee said.

At Dana Hills, Semion Percin , 87, was resting in the teachers’ lounge with other senior citizens.

Percin, a 42-year Laguna Beach resident who has owned Semion’s Fine Arts Gallery for 28 years, had no idea what had happened to his Temple Hills Drive home.

“I was at home; cars were going by, and a girl stopped and said, ‘Semion, hurry,’ ” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to get anything. It was getting very dark (with smoke), and people told me I must go.”

By midnight, there were about 200 people at Dana Hills, volunteers said. The Red Cross dimmed the lights, but most people caught only snatches of sleep, if any.

“I got myself a cot, but I just sat there for awhile. I was not ready to sleep,” said Pam Adams, 41, a Laguna Beach resident and advertising production manager at Allergan Pharmaceuticals in Irvine. She was evacuated from her home on Morningside Drive in Bluebird Canyon.

Her top concern was her pets. “I’m just worried about my cats,” said Adams, whose home survived.

Not so lucky was the Kielty family, whose home of 22 years on Temple Hills Drive was gutted. Andrew, 54; Sigrid, 52, and their daughter, Alexa, 16, spent Thursday at Dana Hills High School but were hoping to find a hotel or motel in Laguna Beach for the night.

They spent the time talking to friends from Laguna Beach, where they plan to rebuild.

“We want to stay in Laguna Beach. It is a very unique place,” Andrew Kielty said. “But first we want to see the damage with our own eyes.”

Others, such as the Klingenmeier family of Laguna Beach, were happy to discover their homes had been spared. But they spent the day at the shelter offering support to their friends, holding back their own feelings because of the problems of the others.

“You can’t really rejoice; you almost feel guilty,” said Tom Klingenmeier, athletic director at Laguna Beach High School. “There are so many things that have gone wrong.”