As Flames Die Down, Anger, Anxiety Emerge

Huddled on a park bench outside a tony Thousand Oaks shopping plaza, Arnold and Sarah Zamora stared in numb anger at the carefree crowds strolling by.

The Zamoras’ entire inventory of possessions lay jumbled in a shopping cart nearby: a few random clothes and a black duffel bag full of Sarah’s cough and skin medicine.

Just days after they arrived in town to take over gardening and cleaning duties for a local family, the couple had watched in shock as the Thousand Oaks house they were living in burned. With no ties to the area and no way to contact their evacuated employers, the Zamoras found their way to the shopping plaza and camped out--miserable, scared and alone.

The crumpled cash in their pockets wasn’t nearly enough to pay for a hotel room, even the half-price deal local motels were offering to fire refugees.

“We’re just domestics, and we’ve got nowhere to go,” said Arnold Zamora. “You hear about all the millionaires who have nine homes and one of them burns and they’re called homeless. Well, what happened to their gardeners, their maids? That’s who we are. We’re out.”

Wrapping his arm around his wife in a gruff embrace, he added: “I’m hungry, I’m angry, I’m tired and I’m disillusioned.”

Sarah, keeping a close watch on the shopping cart, said all she wanted was a way to return to friends and family in Colorado. But a bus ticket seemed out of reach.

“We didn’t lose a home,” she said, “just our means of survival.”

As they sat, dazed and bewildered, local businessman Stephen Rivetti walked by and quietly dropped off two sleeping bags. A founder of Operation Warm-Up, which last year handed out 1,000 sleeping bags to homeless people, Rivetti didn’t even pause for a thank you.

“I just happened to see them and I had bags in my trunk,” he said later. But although the Zamoras gratefully clutched their new makeshift beds, Rivetti knew his gift could not get them home to Denver. “It doesn’t really solve anything,” he said.

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While the Zamoras trudged off to find a Red Cross shelter Friday afternoon, Lisa Linglois was hunting for a new television stand at The Oaks mall.

She was distressed about the fire, she said, but “routine kind of overrides the concern.” So she went about business as usual, working at Amgen and dashing to the mall during lunch.

But she knew her fear would flare up again come nightfall.

“When you see the news, you realize the scope of it,” the Thousand Oaks resident said. “So many people lost so much of their lives.”

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Her blond hair half-curly and half-straight, Barbara Kloster leaned back in her beauty parlor chair and relaxed--until she heard a fire engine screaming down Wendy Road.

“When we hear a firetruck in this area, we cringe,” she said.

As the owner of a saddle and tack store in Newbury Park, Kloster has spent the past few days listening to customers’ frenzied evacuation plans and helping them figure out where to move their horses.

Although the Thousand Oaks fire died down Friday afternoon, smoke still choked Newbury Park’s skies, leaving a sooty film on residents’ cars and a rasping cough in their throats.

But Kloster found the smoke soothing--at least, compared to the crackling flames that had menaced homes and ranches in Los Angeles and Ventura counties earlier in the week.

“You can live with the smoke during the day,” she said. “But when it’s nighttime and you see the orange glow in the sky, it’s terrifying.”

Terrifying, too, for family members watching Southern California’s inferno from afar.

“My relatives have been calling from Chicago and San Diego saying, ‘Are you alive? Are you OK?’ ” Kloster said. “They don’t realize that Thousand Oaks isn’t that tiny. Just because there’s a fire in Thousand Oaks doesn’t mean your house is going up.”

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Lake Sherwood was catapulted into the spotlight Thursday, as the blaze flared ever closer to multimillion-dollar homes and the posh red-brick country club.

“No one’s even heard of Lake Sherwood before, and then all of a sudden. . .,” resident Beverly Dallas said, her voice trailing off as she leaned on a green marble countertop.

After fleeing the fire Thursday afternoon, Dallas and her husband returned that night to sleep at home--or try to.

The flames had earlier jumped to within 100 feet of her tidy front lawn, and Dallas found herself waking up often to make sure the firefighters were still camped out across the street. They always were.

Even when the danger had passed, firefighters remained scattered throughout Lake Sherwood, alert for hot spots and ready to soothe edgy residents.

“They see a wisp of smoke and they think there’s something going on, so they call us in--but really, it’s for nothing,” said Daniel Montano, 18, a firefighter with the California Youth Authority.

Despite his frustration at the frequent false alarms, Montano could sympathize with the still-fearful residents. “I don’t blame ‘em,” he said, marveling at the spacious mansions all around. “If I lived in one of these houses, I’d be worried too.”

* RELATED STORIES: B1, B5, B20