Battered Southland Breathes a Sigh of Relief as Wildfires Ebb : Blazes: Many emergency workers pack up and head home. Homeowners take stock of the damage and consider whether to rebuild.

Nature handed fire-scarred Southern California a break Saturday, corralling dreaded Santa Ana winds and allowing firefighters to contain the ravenous brush fires that have seared their way through the region’s landscape and collective psyche.

By late Saturday, fires were still burning in five uninhabited areas but their pace had slowed. Officials were finally talking about an end in sight to the blazes that began early last week and reached their destructive peak Wednesday.

The officials also said they expected to be ready to battle any flare-ups if the dry, blustery winds return as forecast for early this week.

The region, battered by the flames and agony left in their wake, seemed to exhale deeply with relief. Children looked forward to treats on Halloween. Volleyball games resumed on the shores of Laguna Beach, the community hardest hit by the fires. Firefighters who had rushed to Southern California from other parts of the state and country packed up their equipment and were heading home. And four federal emergency assistance centers opened their doors to homeowners who were beginning the arduous process of rebuilding and carrying on.

“If there’s anything else we can do, pick up the phone and call,” President Clinton told state and federal officials in a conference call Saturday from the Oval Office. “We’ll be there for the follow-up.”

On the scene in Laguna Beach, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and one of the Democrats who wants to run against him next year, Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, separately promised great cooperation in approving fire-related insurance claims.

Wilson, on his second visit to Laguna Beach in three days, said he had met with insurance industry representatives and that many checks had already gone out.

Garamendi, trekking with his son through the charred sections of Laguna’s Mystic Hills neighborhood, said: “We have the toughest insurance regulations in the state and if they don’t work I’ll have them rewritten.”

With all of the 14 major fires that had ravaged the region either extinguished or largely under containment, officials totaled losses, and the news was grim.

Capt. John Bryden of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said more than 167,500 acres in six counties were burned, and at least 731 homes and other buildings were destroyed or damaged. Nobody was killed, but up to 81 people were hurt.

Some loss was of the more prosaic, yet disturbing, sort. In Laguna Beach, looters stole more than $60,000 worth of jewelry and personal property, including a rare 17th-Century tapestry, from fire victims who had to be evacuated, the city’s police reported.

Other fire-related damage was more intangible, but no less real.

Irene Cox, returning to her Sierra Madre home for the first time since flames forced her out Wednesday, was having second thoughts about sticking it out yet again. She has lived in her neighborhood for 23 years.

“I’m still getting organized from the earthquake,” she said, referring to the temblor that rattled her community in June, 1991. “I just told my sister: ‘I think God is trying to tell me something, between the earthquake and this fire.’ I’m too old for this.”

Cox, 58, said that only minutes before she and her neighbors were forced to flee last week they gathered in her home, joined hands in a circle and prayed. “We prayed for protection,” she said.

Throughout the Southland, people moved on. There was much to be done. In the Kinneloa district above Pasadena, residents held “parties” to clear rubble and sift through the ash. Some homeowners hired laborers to do the work.

A veterinarian and 20 Los Angeles County animal control workers combed the nearby hills and streets in search of lost pets and stranded wildlife, the first such operation since the fires began.

But Frank Andrews, director of the county’s animal care and control operations, said workers were surprised that so few animals appeared to need their help. The operation’s tally so far: two cats who were reunited with their owners and two dogs who were taken to the Baldwin Park animal shelter.

And in Laguna Beach, as the first post-fire volleyball game picked up steam on Main Beach, Joseph Blanda married Caren Jansen in the sunny courtyard of the Hotel Laguna. The priest compared their union to the grass that will one day sprout from the nearby blackened hills.

The fire spared downtown Laguna Beach, but it consumed the conversation. Reminders were everywhere--from the musky scent of lingering smoke to the “Discounts for Fire Victims” sign at the Hobie Sports store.

On Sierra Madre’s Alegria Avenue, the site of the neighborhood’s annual Halloween block party, preparations were well under way to carry on with the show. Bud Switzer, 65, was on his second day of pumpkin carving so that he and his son, Kevin, could keep up the family tradition of setting out rows of elaborately decorated jack-o-lanterns along the street.

“These fires are very scary,” Switzer said, “but the Fire Department has always handled them and we’ve learned to live with this. Now it’s business as usual.”

Ann Palmer, a mother of two who lives in the section of Sierra Madre that had been most threatened by the fires, was busy unpacking belongings and settling back into her home. But outside the house stood buckets and two large trash cans next to the hose, just in case the inferno rises again.

Palmer, though, has no plans to bail out. “If I have to live in L.A., it’s going to be here, thank you,” she said.

At Pasadena’s Oak Grove Park, the command center for the Altadena fire, red, yellow and white fire engines lined the streets ready for the trips back to their home bases.

Firefighters, many just awakened from a few hours sleep in small domed tents that filled the park, swapped T-shirts bearing their department logos. One especially popular one was emblazoned, “Firestorm 93” in bright script that resembled flames.

Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Larry Miller, who commanded the fight against the Altadena fire, said: “The fire is extremely stable. As far as structural threat, there is none right now. We have spent since Thursday mopping up around the houses. L.A. County is going back to routine operations.”

Earlier in the day, Miller had apologized to his fellow firefighters for the mistaken weather reports that had predicted strong Santa Ana winds that were sure to whip up flames. Preparing for those winds, firefighters had run several thousand feet of fire hose into the hills above Sierra Madre overnight. But they never had to turn the water on.

James McCutcheon, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides weather information to The Times, said the only winds blowing in Southern California on Saturday afternoon were sea breezes along the coast, and some gusts of up to 28 m.p.h. in desert areas.

He said the Santa Anas could develop again Tuesday or Wednesday, but fire officials said they were confident that by then the danger of new fires will have passed. By late Saturday, there was a feeling among many firefighting crews that a chapter had been closed. And they were very glad for that.

An exhausted Robert Reysden, a firefighter from Monterrey Park who had fought the flames since Wednesday, said: “I haven’t seen a bed for days. I’ve been trying to sleep on the top of the engine.”

But tempering the weary exhilaration was a feeling of awe, and fearful respect, for the terror that nature can unleash. Firestorm ’93 was different, worse than anything most firefighters and residents had ever seen.

“You felt helpless,” said Glendora firefighter Jerry Thompsen, whose Los Angeles County fire crew was dispatched to the Kinneloa district near Pasadena on Wednesday. “Everyone’s dream was going up in flames and there was nothing you could do. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Thousand Oaks firefighter Roger Simms, a member of the first team that responded to the blaze there, said: “There’s not much you can do about fires like this. You’ve got to just see where they’re going and try to protect what’s in their way.”

Meanwhile, investigators throughout Southern California kept up their hunt for arsonists believed to be responsible for at least five of last week’s blazes.

“We’ve sucked in all of the arson kings from Southern California, and we’re interfacing with everybody who has resources that can help us,” Ventura County Fire Chief George Lund said.

Officials in Ventura County said they expected the state’s largest fire, the 39,000-acre Thousand Oaks/Malibu fire, to be completely contained by Tuesday thanks to 1,400 firefighters and 600 support personnel.

At the command center, which only a day earlier had resembled a harried battle station, firefighters were winding down Saturday, swapping war stories as they shucked off their sooty yellow protective gear. Others lined up at a bank of free telephones to call home. Those who are parents promised their children that they would try to make it home for Halloween.

Some of those dispatched to do battle with the flames were assigned other tasks, causing at least some chagrin.

“I’d like a chance to do something, you know?” said Mike Rubio, 33, a firefighter from Sonoma County. “At least then I could say I saved a structure.”

Instead, Rubio and 17 other crew members have been spending time at local fire stations--Rubio wasn’t sure exactly where--in Los Angeles County.

“This one woman brought 15 pumpkin pies,” Rubio said, shaking his head in amazement. “I feel guilty. All I’ve done is eat and sleep.”

Local fire crews, however, have had their fill. With a four-day growth of whiskers and a face battered by the sun, Camarillo firefighter Howard Johnston slumped against his rig, cheered by the prospect of getting out.

“Now that it’s almost over, I’m realizing that when you’re over 50 you might be too old for this kind of stuff,” said Johnston, 53.

Johnston had followed the flames from the brush off the 16th green of Los Robles Golf Course across the rugged Santa Monica Mountains to the Malibu coast.

Exhaustion was written on the faces of fire victims who began streaming into Federal Emergency Management Agency relief centers in Arcadia, Laguna Beach, Camarillo and Murietta in Riverside County to start the long process of rebuilding.

Workers from state and federal agencies were available to process applications for temporary housing, disaster unemployment insurance, mortgage and rental assistance, and low-interest loans for rebuilding homes and businesses.

At the Arcadia Community Regional Park center, Pasadena real estate broker Jaime Suarez, 48, said that although his $500,000 home was insured, his policy will not cover the total loss of his fire-gutted home.

Suarez was disgruntled. “For people who are very poor, grants are available, but for the middle class, the ones who pay taxes, when it comes down to it and you need help from the system, it’s not there,” he said.

Tom Soulanille, a 34-year-old engineer whose Pasadena Glen home was destroyed, had a different outlook. He was already musing about architects and floor plans and just what he would rebuild.

“Right now the best thing to do is nothing until after the winter and what I’m sure will be flooding,” he said. “I want to go back next fall. I may put a trailer up there. We’re subject to nature up there. It’s one thing that binds the neighbors together.

Earlier in the day, Wilson and FEMA Director James Lee Witt met in Downtown Los Angeles with representatives of 12 insurance firms to devise ways to ease relief efforts.

Wilson noted that he had recently approved legislation that requires insurers to contact policyholders and begin investigations into claims within 15 days. The regulations stemmed from complaints lodged against the insurance industry after the 1991 Oakland Hills fires.

Contributing to coverage of the Southern California fires were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Anne Louise Bannon, Dwayne Bray, Sara Catania, Wilson Cummer, Tom Gorman, Shelby Grad, Scott Hadly, Daryl Kelley, Andrew LePage, Jeff Meyers, Mark Platte, Mack Reed, David Reyes, Carla Rivera, David G. Savage, Constance Sommer, Richard Winton and Chris Woodyard.

* RELATED STORIES, RAPHICS, PHOTOS: A3-A10

Southland Fire Toll

The wildfires that cut across six Southern California counties were largely under control by Saturday evening. As of 5 p.m., authorities reported the following figures:

* FIRES: 14 total. One in the San Gabriel foothills above Altadena and Sierra Madre was 65% contained as of 6 p.m. Six others also were partly contained, including one that swept from Thousand Oaks to Malibu, which was 90% contained. Seven are fully contained or nearing containment, including the most devastating one that hit Laguna Beach.

* ACRES BURNED: About 167,600 acres in six Southern California counties.

* DAMAGE: At least 731 homes damaged or destroyed.

* INJURIES: 65 firefighters, including two seriously burned, and 16 residents.

* EVACUATIONS: More than 26,500, mostly from Laguna Beach.

Aid to Fire Victims

* Businesses or organizations that wish to offer free services for fire victims may call The Times at 1-800-234-4444 to offer assistance. Or call TimesLink at 808-8463, *8300 to leave a recorded message. The Times will publish the services at no charge.