For Whatever Reason, Heart of Laguna Beach Unscathed : Fire: Whether it was a shift in winds, quick action by some city workers or just a quirk, downtown is spared.

They slurped beer Friday at the Marine Room, lunched at the Cottage restaurant and booked guests at the Hotel Laguna, reveling in the fact that their downtown was still here.

How did it happen?

“Good question,” said police Capt. Bill Cavanaugh. “Everybody says, ‘You saved downtown.’ But I don’t know if we saved anything. It was just a quirk.”

Whether it was that, or a shift of the wind, or quick action by city worker Bob McNally and a handful of other city employees who doused the flames threatening City Hall on Wednesday, it is clear that while much was lost in this fire, a very important piece in the fabric of this community was spared.

“The coffeehouses, the boutiques--these are places that people go to every single day of their lives to drink their coffee and read their newspapers and talk to each other,” said Pat Cunningham, who works at the Hotel Laguna on South Coast Highway. “It’s so much a part of people’s lives. It would have been absolutely devastating.”

For the longest time, downtown--a renowned collection of quaint shops, chic galleries and charming coffee shops--looked doomed by the ferocious blaze.

By late afternoon, from the roof of the world-famous Hotel Laguna, where Bogey and Bacall once rendezvoused, the fire had tread dangerously close to City Hall.

It had leaped the north fork of Laguna Canyon Road, made its way down the west bank of the Mystic Hills area and was drawing a bead on the Forest Avenue civic complex.

If nothing happened to thwart its path, officials said, it could easily have savaged downtown, what with its plethora of close-packed buildings and wooden facades.

“If it had . . . gotten to City Hall,” said McNally, “that pretty much would have ushered it into the downtown area.”

It got close enough to City Hall that workers at the Laguna Beach Animal Hospital across the street on Forest Avenue had put leashes on all their dogs and placed their cats in pens so they would be ready to evacuate.

“It really did look like it was going to sweep right through,” said Kathleen Goetz, a technician and receptionist at the animal hospital.

Down the street at the Renaissance Cafe, a popular meeting place for residents, employees began to panic.

“We really started to fear it,” said Brian Wisely, who works at the cafe. “It seemed like a long shot to reach us at first.

“But as it got smokier and smokier, and we could clearly see flames behind the police station, we began to believe that it could reach us just because it could spread from one building to the next.”

Said City Manager Kenneth C. Frank: “I was sitting in my office and the flames were coming down the mountain and we were getting ready to evacuate City Hall. We expected it to head straight downtown. But what basically happened was the wind shifted.”

What also happened was McNally, sort of a repairman, maintenance specialist and jack-of-all trades for the city, and a slew of other public works employees grabbed water hoses, dashed to the rear of City Hall and fended off the flames as best as they could.

Each time a glowing ember ignited some chaparral, they drowned it.

“The wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour and the water pressure was so low, the water would only reach about 30 feet up the hill,” McNally said.

At one point, the flames came within a few feet of the city’s auxiliary generator. If the generator had been destroyed--and the power had failed, as it did in many parts of the city--there would have been no way for the city’s emergency communications system to operate.

“We could have lost the town,” McNally said.

Thanks to a southerly wind shift and the fact that the asphalt behind City Hall served as a natural firebreak, officials said, the fire retreated back up the hillside and never got closer to downtown. As the blaze turned southeast, more homes were lost, but downtown was saved.

“Everyone is so happy that some things didn’t go,” said Genny Edge, a bookseller at Fahrenheit 451, another favorite haunt. “The City Hall and Police Department and the Fire Department are still there. And downtown’s still there. So there’s something to be thankful for.”

Said Cunningham: “It’s sort of a minor miracle.”