In a Panic, Odd Items Get Rescued : Escape: While some grab pictures and clothing, others clutch only a passport, wok or snorkel as they race from flames.

Cassie Parham recalls the panic as she raced in and out of her Laguna Beach home, frantically telling herself that above all else, she had to remember the computer that contained her short stories.

“I kept saying as I was running up and down, ‘I’m going to grab that, I’m going to grab that,’ and I forgot it and I want to scream,” Parham, 22, said Thursday as she and her parents returned to the remains of their fire-ravaged home on Skyline Drive.

“I have my running trophies from high school and not my computer,” the UC Irvine student said with evident disgust. “I grabbed my underwear and not my computer.”

As victims of the most devastating fire in Orange County history returned to Laguna Beach on Thursday, they reflected with anger and some amusement on the belongings they had struggled to rescue the day before. Others spoke of their shock at realizing just how much they had lost.

In general, those who managed to escape with any possessions grabbed the kinds of things most people might try to save in a natural disaster: pets, family photographs, clothing. But some carried out more unusual items, like surfboards, woks, even a pair of nail clippers.

In the fire’s aftermath, still others said ruefully that the experience taught them how their own ideas of important possessions differed radically from those of their loved ones.

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Sitting on the front steps of her burned-out home on Skyline Drive on Thursday morning, Barbara Lane broke down in tears upon realizing that her beloved pictures and mementos were gone.

Her husband, John, an Orange County fireman, commented on “the differences in people . . . how she thought right away of the pictures and things, which I didn’t. The fire was so hot that it melted everything. Thankfully, we’re covered. That’s the saving grace.”

Also in Laguna Beach, Steve Foulger, an engineer with Northrop Corp., was mourning his 1988 Supra. In the rush to evacuate their home the day before, Foulger said, his wife chose to take the family’s aging Buick as her getaway car.

At the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, spokeswoman Christie Johnson said she could testify to the overwhelming attachment many people have for their pets. Although the hotel normally does not accept animals, its management had decided to do so for all fire victims.

Margo Sweet said she had taken only her glasses and her passport with her Wednesday when she fled her Laguna Beach home.

Sitting dazed in an evacuation center at Dana Hills High School, the 51-year-old kindergarten teacher said she did not yet know the condition of her home but assumed it was lost.

Joseph Wu, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the UC Irvine, said that in life-threatening situations, instinct frequently takes over, prompting people to grab belongings that somehow symbolize comfort during a period of trouble.

For example, he said, while most people would choose items of great sentimental or actual value, along with food and clothing, others, in a more panicked state, might grab cooking utensils or passports, or other things not likely to be immediately useful.

Bill Ellwanger, 52, said he was amused to watch some of his neighbors in north Laguna Beach taking surfboards and snorkels with them as they left the burning areas.

And Patricia Powers, who works in the insurance field, managed to salvage only two things--a wok and a nail clipper--from the rubble of her apartment on Manzanita Drive.

“I think I’m in shock. I had pretty furniture and pretty things around. How do you replace that?” Powers said to her friend, Julie Jeffery.

“At least you can clip your nails now,” Jeffery offered.

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Times Staff Writers Leslie Berkman, Tammerlin Drummond, Greg Johnson, Rene Lynch and Mary Lou Pickel contributed to this report.