Wary Laguna Begins Recovery : 1 Person May Have Set 2 Blazes, Officials Say : Disaster: Predicted return of winds has crews alert for flare-ups. Downtown shops reopen, residents return home. Arson investigators seek driver of a car seen near site of Anaheim Hills fire.

Even as firefighters worried that a new round of Santa Ana winds might rekindle dormant embers, this battle-weary city sought to regain some normalcy Friday, with downtown businesses reopening, residents returning to burned-down homes and citizens talking hopefully of rebuilding.

“You can drive through the city, firetrucks aren’t blocking the streets anymore, and people are smiling--it’s almost as if it never happened. If you don’t look up in the hills, you wouldn’t know,” local resident Don Kansteiner said Friday afternoon as he strolled through a bustling downtown street that had begun to show signs of its old self.

Kansteiner, a salesman, was one of the lucky ones who still had a home. For scores of others around the area, smiles were more forced, images of charred hillsides tougher to avoid. And Friday’s developments only underscored the tragedy:

* Arson investigators revealed that they are seeking to determine whether Wednesday’s fires in Laguna Beach and the Villa Park-Anaheim Hills area were set by the same person. They are particularly interested in talking with the driver of a black Pontiac Fiero who was seen speeding from the scene of the Anaheim Hills fire Wednesday morning.

* Fire officials expanded the tally of the area burned by the Laguna fire to 16,684 acres, up from a previous estimate of 10,000 acres. That would rank the fire as the third biggest in county history in acreage, behind only a 1948 blaze in Santa Ana Canyon and this week’s ongoing fire off Ortega Highway in the rural eastern part of the county.

The estimate of the devastation also grew Friday, as fire officials reported that 366 homes were destroyed and 41 suffered some damage. Reported losses have already totaled $270 million, and that figure is expected to grow significantly.

* Firefighters reported that they had the Ortega Highway fire 40% contained and expect to have it fully controlled within the next few days. It has burned 17,000 acres and destroyed 22 structures, including some houses, but no communities were immediately threatened.

“It’s like a wild horse that you put in a corral that wants to get out,” said John Silvius of the U.S. Forest Service. “It runs along and it tests every part of the fence, but when it finds there’s no weak link, it simmers down and comes under control.”

Fire officials were optimistic about the prospects of seizing control of the fire before it can damage any more homes.

“Today was a big turnaround day,” said Ed Waggoner, a California Department of Forestry operations chief. “We needed today to secure all of these (firebreak) lines.”

Waggoner said the goal was to reopen Ortega Highway, which has been shut down since Wednesday night, today for local residents and by Monday for other traffic.

* Orange County Fire Chief Larry Holms said Friday that even an assembled army with the most sophisticated equipment and advance notice could not have prevented the destruction in Laguna Beach and other parts of the county.

Defending his Fire Department from criticism that it could have been better prepared, Holms said “some areas were simply indefensible. When you have homes sitting on stilts high up on a hill, surrounded by vegetation with fire coming right at them, there is no way to save them.”

Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young said that with the fires now largely under control, authorities were refocusing their efforts from fire protection to rebuilding. That process will start in earnest Monday and Tuesday, when crews begin reseeding terrain around Laguna Canyon to try to avoid soil erosion and flooding in the hillsides in the months ahead.

“One of our concerns is that when the rains come, if there is no vegetation, you’ll have erosion,” said county fire spokeswoman Maria Sabol.

In the meantime, Young said, between 300 and 400 firefighters will remain on patrol in the Laguna Beach area, monitoring hot spots to ensure that there are no flare-ups from the ash and rubble--especially in light of predictions of Santa Ana winds through the weekend.

“Our indications are that (the weekend winds) won’t be as high as they were earlier. That sounds wonderful, but we have to be ready for anything,” Young said. “We all learned from the Oakland fire that you can’t turn your back on these things.”

At the Ortega Highway fire, Waggoner said that low Santa Anas could actually help firefighters by driving the remaining flames toward scorched earth and fire lines, but high winds could prove troublesome.

“Forty (miles an hour) is getting on the verge of some dangers for us. Twenties we could deal with, 30s we could deal with. But in the 40s, we might start getting concerned,” he said.

After the destruction of the last few days, area residents were just hoping for a calm weekend.

At El Morro Beach Mobile Home Park on Coast Highway north of Laguna Beach, dozens of residents exchanged hugs and tears as they were allowed to return for the first time Friday to the charred lots that were once their homes.

“Look, this was Dick’s surfboard,” one woman yelled out to her sister with a pained laugh as she sorted through the mangled wreckage.

In all, more than 30 mobile homes out of nearly 300 were burned to the ground as the swiftly moving fire jetted over a hill from Laguna Canyon on Wednesday afternoon and swept through the east side of the park. Everyone got out safely.

For hours, they traded stories about the harrowing moments before the fire reached the park. They queried park managers about how the fire would affect leases and insurance.

And they milled through their blackened lots, amazed at the odd bits that were left untouched--a ceramic angel, a plastic pumpkin sitting atop a mailbox, a set of weights.

“I got out what mattered,” 37-year-old Gabe Penney, who is six months’ pregnant, said as she held her daughter, nearly 2, and combed through her destroyed home. “I got my daughter and some water and some diapers, and I left. I feel like God is good. We did not lose everything. We have our family.”

Penney and most of her neighbors who returned to the mobile home park said they hope to buy new trailers and remain in the close-knit community. One mobile home company tried to make it easier Friday, parking a sales model on the park grass for prospective buyers.

Some residents said they were trying to accept the loss, but only grudgingly.

Mike Graney, a 19-year-old college student who lived in the mobile home that his grandmother had owned for two decades, said he “bawled” on the night of the fire.

“I’ve got to move on now. I don’t want to dwell on this,” the blond surfer said. “But I grew up here--this has been my family’s trailer, so it was really an emotional loss. There were a lot of memories here.”

Similar emotions were expressed all around Laguna Beach.

At the end of Forest Avenue at the Police Department, weary residents lined up for passes to get back to their homes. Residents from Canyon Acres, a community in Laguna Canyon that was ravaged by the blaze, comforted one another.

“I’m so sorry,” one woman said, reaching out to hug another who responded, “I’m so happy for you, Sue. Your house is still there.”

For others around the city, Friday marked the beginning of a return to normal life.

“It’s amazing how quickly this town seems to have come back to life,” 48-year-old John Jorge, an unemployed salesman, said as he stood chatting with a friend on a downtown sidewalk.

Most of the busy downtown’s many galleries, cafes and boutiques resumed business, and the local cinema reopened with the debut of “Fatal Instinct.”

The post office began delivering mail again to accessible homes in the area, and postal carriers drove through fire-ravaged streets in search of houses that were still standing.

Streets were jammed with drivers trying to get through the downtown area, and people jockeyed for tough-to-come-by parking spots--a sure sign of everyday life in Laguna Beach.

Day laborers returned to Laguna Canyon Road in search of jobs, and most television news vans left Main Beach Park, where fire officials had set up a command post, in search of other stories. Even most of the food vendors, who had set up shop on the beach to serve free meals to the governor and to dozens of tired firefighters, had left the area.

“It was steak and chicken” on Thursday, Young of the Orange County Fire Department said as he downed a quick lunch at the command post. “Now it’s hoagies.”

Times staff writers Kevin Johnson and Gebe Martinez contributed to this report.

Limited Access

The neighborhoods hardest hit by fire in the hills of Laguna Beach are closed to non-residents. Residents can get access permits to their streets by showing proof of residency at the Laguna Beach Police Department, 606 Forest Ave. There are some streets that sustained significant fire damage.

Source: Orange County Fire Department