Glimpses of Life in Afterworld of Laguna : Aftermath: With the fire out and the damage done, newly homeless residents begin dealing with an uncertain future. Some are taking it better than others.

Sheryl Caverly had little time for tears Friday. She was too busy.

By nightfall, she and her husband, Thomas, had made major progress putting their lives back together. They had ordered new checks. They were staying at a relative’s home, and the phone company was already forwarding their calls there.

The Caverlys got an early start. They learned via television on Wednesday night that their trilevel home on Temple Hills Road had burned to the ground, and by Thursday--before they even got back home--they had a $2,000 insurance check.

For those left homeless by the wildfires that roared through Laguna Beach, Friday was a day to begin putting aside the past and start coping with an uncertain, unsettling future. Neighbors hugged each other, offered shelter and traded temporary telephone numbers.

“I guess we need to check with each other to see what strides we’re each making with insurance and all,” said Marge Rankin, who wandered up to the Caverlys’ property after surveying what little was left of her own home down the street.

“Oh, I’ve already been,” Caverly said as she turned to deliver a sandwich to her husband, who was on his knees picking through ashy residue. “I already have a check from Allstate.”

What had been swept from this coastal village in a matter of hours would now take months to re-create. Permits to rebuild were a distant thought; residents lined up at City Hall were happy just to get permits allowing them back to their homes.

More than 300 of the green permits were passed out to residents, said Mayor Lida Lenney.

General Telephone spokesman Larry Cox said that of the 350 Laguna Beach residents who lost their phone service in the fire, 107 called Friday to find out what to do next. Fire victims can choose GTE’s voice-messaging services or remote call-forwarding system and pay nothing for the next 90 days, Cox said. Either service connects to customers’ regular phone numbers.

The Laguna Beach Presbyterian Church provided a center where people could drop off clothing, food or supplies they want to donate for the needy; the Red Cross set up camp at the Wells Fargo bank on Ocean Avenue to pass out food and supplies, and the federal government will open a disaster relief center today at City Hall.

Those who had fire insurance were talking of building new homes on the same lots now covered with piles of ashes. But those without the protection wondered desperately where to begin.

The Caverlys on Temple Hill Drive had managed to save a few belongings before the fire reached their home Wednesday, including photo albums and important family records that had been stored in the fireproof safe.

On Friday, they found the safe. It was so badly damaged that it had not fully protected their rare coin collection. They plan to rebuild there where the family had lived for 24 years. Said Caverly: “We have a wonderful view.”

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David Norton, 45, a Laguna Beach dentist, his wife, Barbara, and their sons were busy as well. They were were making plans to find temporary housing, and he went to the post office to have their household mail forwarded to his office.

They had already searched Thursday through what remained of their Mystic Hills home where they had lived for 15 years and found only a few items.

On Friday, he kept bumping into patients and friends who didn’t quite know what to say.

“I lucked out. . . . Sorry,” one passerby told him outside City Hall.

“I knew the house was gone but we thought we would find something left in the rubble,” Norton said. “But there was nothing left but a few cheap coffee cups. The good stuff, the china, was all broken and pulverized.”

Norton said his heart has been touched by all the help that his neighbors and friends have extended, ranging from offers of clothing to a place to stay.

“I start listening to the messages on my telephone message machine and I start crying,” he said.

But the family is now talking about how to build and furnish a new house. His younger son, Norton added, “is already designing his room.”

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Theresa Seradsky, 33, wasn’t all that keen about starting over as she surveyed the remains of her mobile home at the El Morro Beach Mobile Home Park. After all, she said, she had pretty much started over at El Morro only a month ago.

Once living the life of affluence--the kitchen in her $650,000 Los Angeles home was once featured in a national magazine--Seradsky said she had been forced by a series of personal and financial setbacks to give up her 13-year marriage, her home and her affluent lifestyle, and move with her three children to the trailer park where she could afford the $450 monthly lease payment.

“My whole life for the last two years has been one trauma after another,” Seradsky said Friday, her body shaking as tears rolled down her cheeks. “This is just the icing on the cake.”

She had just learned that the insurance coverage on the mobile home had expired at the end of last month. The initial step, Seradsky and her mother said, will be the federal disaster office first thing Saturday morning.

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“These were not $3-million homes here,” Jeanne Hansen said as she showed a picture of her small one-bedroom home at El Morro.

She and family members had built a cottage at the mobile home park about 20 years ago by herself and family members--it was an “act of love,” she said. It had become her full-time residence earlier this year.

She wants to rebuild, but doesn’t know how she’ll do it. She said she was without insurance. Hansen, 50, said she had been quoted a $500 insurance premium and had been shopping around for a “better deal.”

“Five hundred dollars . . . and this is where I am. Looking for a better deal, and this is where I am,” Hansen said as she took a break from the cleanup work to munch on a slice of pizza.

Not only had she lost her home, but also her cat, Linus.

She was worried, but not desperate. Hansen said the close-knit community at the trailer park would pull together. “This is the neatest little place here,” she said. Her fiance, Mitch Drasco, 47, joked, “We have to figure out where to have the next party.”

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Fire victims who watched their memories go up in flames were desperate Friday to hold onto the past while also preparing for the future.

At 30-Minute Photos Etc. in Irvine, workers were kept late to process free reproductions for fire victims’ precious photographs.

“We’re supposed to close at 7 (p.m.) but people just keep coming,” said co-owner Mitchell Goldstone, adding that he finally closed the doors at 8:30 p.m. to give his employees a much-needed break. All day long, fire victims--many on the verge of tears--streamed through his doors to reproduce snapshots that for many were all they had left.

“I think a lot of these people have nothing now and are desperate to get back to normalcy, to have something to hold on to that they can remember,” Goldstone said. “One woman brought in pictures of her two dogs that were killed in the fire. It was very emotional. She started to cry.”

Some people who suffered severe financial losses needed the photos for insurance purposes, he said. One thankful customer brought back lunch for employees.

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Canyon Acres resident Paula Sorensen, one of the fortunate residents who did not lose her home, paused Friday outside the Laguna Beach Fire Department to hug neighbors and other area residents who were not so lucky.

As she stopped to grasp the hand of one neighbor, Laguna Beach firefighter Carl Klass, she began to weep. Klass wrapped his arms around her and offered words of comfort.

“We haven’t died. Canyon Acres is coming back, bigger and better than ever,” said Klass, who lost his garage and a Jeep--his first vehicle--to the flames.

As another neighbor whose home was lost walked by, Klass shouted out: “Hey, I know a builder!” and shot her a thumbs-up sign. Turning back, he explained: “They live on Skyline. They weren’t lucky.”

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Mandy Carlyle, 13, went down to the Presbyterian Church to help sort bags of donated clothes, after reassuring calling relatives that her house is OK.

“There were a lot of people giving clothes,” Mandy said. “They were drawn and sad, but they were glad they could help.” Mandy said she plans to help distribute clothes at the church today.

On the first day of distribution, few people came to get clothes, she said.

Mandy said she also wants to help her friend Kim Woodhouse, 13, whose home was destroyed. “We’ve all talked to her,” Mandy said. “She can’t really believe it. We’ve offered her our home.”

Mandy said she will help Kim recover some memories by taping old videotapes of the two girls. They have been friends since preschool.

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Lisa Kasprzycki, on vacation in Laguna Beach, canceled her plans to return home Thursday, and is organizing an art auction to raise money for fire victims.

“I was born in Laguna Beach, and I love it,” said the 26-year-old painter Friday as she hung posters on Broadway to advertise the Nov. 6 auction.

Kasprzycki said she left Laguna Beach 10 years ago, but has continued to visit the city. She was staying with a friend in town when the fire struck.

Her friend, Roark Grourley, also an artist, immediately thought to raise disaster money by selling art. Kasprzycki said she’s trying to get donated art--the artist will decide where the money should go.

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On Emerald Bay, Charles P. Taylor, 62, sifted through ruins of what once was a million-dollar collection of rare magic books and elaborate old tricks from famous magicians that he stored in the cellar of his home.

“My dad had been collecting magic for 50 years,” said Taylor’s daughter, Terry Taylor Wilson, 35. “He did shows and enjoyed magic.”

Actually, Taylor had dubbed the basement his “magic cellar.” His daughter said it included a seance room and black art stage.

The walls were adorned with mint-condition posters of famous prestidigitators of the past, including Houdini, Dunninger, Dante, Thurston and Blackstone.

“He was home at the time the Laguna fire swept over the ridge, but he told me he didn’t think it was going to be a big concern,” said Capt. Jim Waddell of the Orange County Fire Department and also a resident of Emerald Bay.

“But in a very short time his home was on fire and he came to ask me for help,” Waddell said. “We were in the middle of hooking up equipment. I had no radio, no communications with other fire departments, unless I went to the phone and called 911 myself and I knew that was not going to do any good.”

Taylor is an investor. And for the last 25 years, he has also served as a volunteer firefighter at the Emerald Bay station.

He did not join the Fire Department for the $7-an-hour per-call wage, Waddell said. “We do it not for the money, but for the community service.”

All that was left of Taylor’s home was the chimney.

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David Smith, 52, and his wife, Nita, spent most of Friday worrying about their two dogs.

“Our daughters are looking for them at the shelters,” said Smith, whose home on Skyline Terrace was demolished. “Nothing else is left. Everything is gone.”

The dogs had been alone in the house when flames engulfed it, Smith said, because he was at a business meeting and his wife was attending classes at Saddleback College.

Smith said while his wife “cried right away” at the loss of their home, “all of a sudden this morning I broke down in the shower and cried.”

The Smiths said the worst part was remembering all the personal efforts they had made to fix up their house, the special palm trees they planted and the back-yard deck they finished building just two weeks ago.

“It feels exactly like starting over, like when you were 20,” Nita Smith said.

The Smiths, who are temporarily living with his parents, said they ran into a lot of their displaced neighbors Thursday at the Laguna Hills Mall--in the department stores buying underwear and other essentials.

“A lot of people offered us help,” David Smith said, including a business competitor. “He called and gave his condolences and offered office space.”

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As the flames raged down the ridgeline behind his Canyon Acres home Wednesday afternoon, Jay Grant stepped underneath a sycamore tree and bowed his head in prayer.

“ ‘If there’s any way You can turn this thing back, then do it,’ I prayed,” said Grant, 51, a Canyon Acres resident for 19 years. “But not my will, Your will.”

Grant returned to his home Thursday and learned that he had lost everything in the nearly one-acre compound in Canyon Acres shared with his 79-year-old mother and his brother-in-law’s family. His mother had moved there after escaping a fire last February at a Coast Highway apartment building.

“If this is some sort of issue I have to work through in my life, then so be it,” said Grant, a former Christian minister who is now a well-known local newspaper columnist and Sawdust Festival artist. “I can handle that.”

As he picked through the ashes Friday, Grant pointed out the homes he and his brother-in-law, Mark Blumenfeld, had painstakingly built out of a former hippie retreat.

“We spent about 20 years building this, making sure everything was exactly to code,” Grant said. “It took thousands of dollars. But it’s not the money, it’s the hours and hours it took to make it a beautiful piece of property.”

And then he stopped for a moment, and uttered the fear shared by other residents of picturesque Canyon Acres: that the whimsical character of their neighborhood may be lost to the strict codes enforced by the city bureaucracy.

“I am petrified that the city will not let me put my property back up the way it was,” Grant said. “That’s my biggest fear, that we will not be able to rebuild.”

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Times staff writers Leslie Berkman, Jenny Brundin, Lily Dizon, Len Hall, Rene Lynch, David Reyes, Rebecca Trounson and Jodi Wilgoren and correspondent Willson Cummer contributed to this report.