The Southland Firestorms: Week Two : Amid the Smoke, Evacuations and Gridlock : Schools: Students at three elementary campuses are transported to area pickup sites within two hours after the flames appear.

A fire drill was planned for Topanga Elementary School this morning, but when the real thing came a day early, administrators decided not to ring the fire bells. They didn’t want to panic the children.

Teachers shepherded their classes to an upper playground where, with smoke and flames sweeping across hillsides in the distance, the youngsters sat calmly or colored on paper until parents and school buses arrived to rush them away.

“The kids were very orderly,” said Donna Workman, a third-grade teacher. “I was hysterical.”

Topanga was one of three schools evacuated within two hours after the fire began. Kindergarten and elementary students were also transported from Viewpoint School and Meadow Oaks School, two private campuses in Calabasas. No injuries or damage to school grounds were reported.

In all, more than 1,000 students were bused to a nearby shopping center, church and high school. On a day that could have been marked by panic, teachers and children alike remained surprisingly calm.

“We could see the smoke from our classroom,” said Jennie Katz, a fifth-grader at Meadow Oaks. “The smoke was red, it looked like there was a fire right where the smoke was. It was pretty close to the school, but there were a couple hills before the fire would have hit the school. I was not really nervous.”

Parents were another matter.

They arrived by the hundreds at schools throughout Calabasas, Las Virgenes and the southwest San Fernando Valley to take their children home, even from campuses that were not threatened and continued classes as scheduled.

At Calabasas High School, near where the fire began, one mother barged into a physical education class looking for her son.

“There are a lot of worried parents,” said Lee Shagan, a teacher at the high school.

John Coffer--whose 2-year-old son, Stephen, attends a day-care center near Topanga Elementary--heard the first reports of fire from his El Segundo office. He knew that Stephen had been evacuated but didn’t know where.

“I called everybody I could call,” Coffer said. “I didn’t know where I was going.”

Eventually, a radio report led Coffer to Birmingham High School, where hundreds of evacuated students waited. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and cousins soon trickled onto the Van Nuys campus to find their children eating pizza and Popsicles.

Even with the apparent calm, school officials and child experts warn that psychological effects from the fire could surface in weeks to come. The sight of fire, as well as the smell of smoke, can traumatize.

“Everybody was scared,” said Ashley Darrow, 6, a first-grader at Topanga Elementary. “Some of the people were crying about the fire because they thought it would come to our school.”

School closures, coupled with Tuesday’s flames, smoke and turmoil, could be disturbing.

“Maybe they won’t see a friend at school and they’ll wonder what happened. Maybe their homes are gone,” said Shel Erlich, a Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman. “We will do the same thing we do for every traumatic experience and make counseling available.”

Young children may regress with bed-wetting, thumb-sucking or fear of monsters, the dark or noises, said Melinda Sprague, a child-stress expert. Parents can help by encouraging children to talk about their fears and concerns. Children should also be reassured of their own safety.

At Birmingham High, 5-year-old Ben Oginz alternated between elation and worry. Said his mother, Lori Starr: “He goes from thinking it’s fun to asking if our house is burned.”

Correspondent Matthew Heller and Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this story.