Beach-Goers Return as Fire Victims Try to Rebuild Lives : Atmosphere: The reopening of PCH brings a semblance of normalcy to the area. But convoys of repair trucks are at work behind the scenes.

While lucky residents whose houses survived the Santa Monica Mountains firestorm returned to a normal life on Saturday, victims of the fire could only sift through the ashes of their burned-out homes and ask the government to help them put their lives back in order.

Bringing a semblance of normalcy to the area, Pacific Coast Highway, which had been closed from Point Mugu State Park to the Los Angeles County line since Tuesday, reopened Saturday, allowing surfers and sunbathers to hit the beaches and vendors to set up shop along the highway.

But convoys of telephone and electrical repair trucks, rumbling up and down the coast before heading into the mountains, served as grim reminders of the devastation north of the highway. Along hard-hit Yerba Buena Road--which snakes through the mountains for about 15 miles--dozens of workers laid miles of new cable and replaced charred telephone poles.

In an exclusive 40-acre enclave at the very top of Yerba Buena Road, Austin and Kitty Ivey stood on their deck and surveyed the mountains, a surreal wasteland of white ash and blackened earth. On Thursday, fire had ripped up the mountain, encircling eight homes, but the Iveys’ house and six others were saved, an oasis amid the destruction.

Austin Ivey, a 76-year-old retired wood-shop teacher who built the house himself 13 years ago, had refused orders to evacuate. His wife left, taking family heirlooms with her. But Ivey, along with two grown sons who joined him that morning, “stayed to defend our home,” Kitty said. “He doesn’t have enough good sense to be afraid.”

Firefighters from five companies protected the homes, losing only one, an unoccupied house on a craggy promontory. “Once the firemen came, it was such a comfort,” said Kitty Ivey, 55. “I hugged them all when I came back.”

On Saturday, her washing machine was in constant use and she did housework to eradicate all the smells and smudges from the fire. “Everything has to be cleaned,” she said. Her only ill effect: “A tremendous headache from the tension.”

While Austin Ivey defied orders to leave his house, firefighters on Wednesday literally picked up grandmotherly Jerry Johnson and put her in her car as flames surrounded her Lazy J Ranch on Cotharin Road off Yerba Buena. But after she drove down to Pacific Coast Highway, she sneaked back past a sheriff’s deputy.

“I just whizzed by,” said Johnson, whose house was lightly damaged by the fire.

The business-as-usual atmosphere Saturday along Pacific Coast Highway was slightly unreal to Wally Espeseth, whose rented home burned to the ground on Wednesday. Espeseth, 32, sat at a table at Neptune’s Net restaurant and watched the beach-goers enjoy themselves.

“This is a tourist and weekender attraction, so it looks normal because those people don’t live here, but among the (residents), the stress level is high,” Espeseth said.

Espeseth said he didn’t know his Yerba Buena house had been destroyed until he saw the ruins, along with those of his neighbor, country singer Dwight Yoakum, on television Wednesday night.

Like Espeseth, Hayden and Karen Clark have filed for federal and state assistance. The Clarks, who lost their mobile home and a guest house on Yerba Buena Road, visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency at Camarillo Airport on Saturday and were told they were eligible for low-interest loans.

“It sounds good so far, but the proof is in the pudding,” said Hayden Clark, 33, who had been planning to build a house on his property. “If there is a silver lining in all this, it’s that I probably would have spent $10,000 to clear the land, but the fire did it in hours.”

Not everybody had praise for the firefighters. Craig Latta and two friends had to beat down flames with shovels and burlap sacks after an engine company from Culver City pulled out as the fire raced toward his house on Mipolomol Road off Cotharin Road.

“I’m going, ‘What are you doing? Look at this. Look what’s coming,’ ” Latta said. “At one point, I really thought that was it. I thought we were going to die.”

Latta said he believes his experience raises the issue of wildfire training for urban firefighters.

“Brush fires are a regular occurrence in Southern California,” he said. “I think all firefighters should have that type of training.”

Fire officials acknowledged that such complaints have been heard before. Urban firefighters “are definitely at a disadvantage,” said Ventura County Fire Chief George E. Lund. “They have very little training in wildfire situations, but in the situation we faced in the last several days, if we got a fight team in, we just deployed them, regardless.”

County Fire Capt. Keith Gurrola said he did not know why the Culver City company pulled out, “but it could have been that maybe one captain was not sure of the situation. (But) I can’t fault any firefighters for what they do.”

While firefighters who fought the blazes during the week took a well-needed rest over the weekend, others were itching to get into the battle. The fire command post in Thousand Oaks was swarming with firefighters from all over the country on Saturday, many of whom will serve as mop-up crews to make sure the fires are out.

Stasia Garcia and her unit, U.S. Forest Service firefighters from Washington, endured bus and plane rides to reach Ventura County but haven’t been called into action.

“We all are a little impatient,” she said with a grimace.

Garcia has fought a few brush fires in Washington, but never has seen anything like the scope of the Santa Monica Mountains inferno.

“It’s a whole different critter than working on houses, that’s for sure,” she said.