Who Saved the Day? George and Harry Did It! : Heroes: Mystic View homeowners salute brave pair who saved their homes with garden hoses and trash can lids. They just happened to be in the neighborhood.

The police were gone and there were no fire engines in sight. The homeowners fled.

The only thing separating seven houses at the end of Mystic View and the immense fireball ravaging homes on the hills above was a garden hose and two men who didn’t even live in the neighborhood.

After a night of fiery hell that claimed 366 houses in Laguna Beach, anxious Mystic View homeowners returned the next day to a sight that brought tears to their eyes--a lonely row of slightly singed homes standing amid the blackened scene of destruction.

And propped against one of the houses, a makeshift sign written in charcoal that proclaimed: “We did it! -- George and Harry.”

Tonight, several Mystic View residents will express their gratitude to George Reasons Jr. and Harry Musante at a local restaurant. But as homeowner Betty Barrus put it: “How do you thank people for risking their lives like that?

“I knew my house was gone and I wasn’t going to go back and sift through the ashes,” said Barrus. “But a friend called me and said she saw my house on television and I knew who (saved) it. I owe 32 years of memories to George and Harry.”

For about eight hours, Musante and Reasons say, they battled spot fires started by golf ball-sized embers falling on Mystic View, at one point almost completely encircled by the inferno that claimed entire rows of houses above them.

Their main weapons were garden hoses and trash can lids. Leaving the hoses running at each house, they dashed from home to home, spraying water to extinguish small fires on wooden decks, bushes and trees. The trash can lids were used to shield their faces from the overwhelming heat.

“The heat and noise were incredible,” said Musante, a 38-year-old Laguna Beach resident. “Windows were blowing out, concrete literally blowing up, gas lines were exploding. George and I would look up at these houses on fire all around us and say, ‘Man, can you believe this?’ ”

One of the most serene vistas in Laguna Beach goes along with the expensive houses at the end of Mystic View. In one direction, the sun sets on the Pacific Ocean, and downtown lights sparkle. In the other direction lies an unspoiled view of once-verdant Laguna Canyon.

When black smoke began spreading in the skies above the canyon last week, Reasons and Musante decided to drive up to the end of Mystic View to see what was happening to Laguna Beach. What they saw was a flaming holocaust heading right for the heavily populated hills near the ocean.

Meanwhile, Burras, her stomach tightening as she watched the fire swiftly consume acres of brush, stepped out her front door and wondered what her first move should be. Spotting the scared, slightly confused woman, Reasons and Musante stepped forward to volunteer their help.

“They asked me, ‘Are you all alone here?’ and they jumped up on my roof and began putting water on everything,” Barrus recalled.

Most of the residents at that end of Mystic View were away from home. Rhonda Carmony, 23, who works as a part-time legal aide next door to Barrus, remembers seeing two men on her roof before police evacuated the street.

Musante and Reasons decided to stay and fight.

“It was a gut reaction,” said the 42-year-old Reasons, a local musician. “It’s not like we wanted to throw our lives away. But we said, ‘We can save this house, we can do it.’ ”

Fire officials said afterward that, with the entire hill on fire and resources stretched thin, no engines were assigned to Mystic View. Reasons and Musante were on their own.

For hours, ending at nearly 10 p.m., the two men were on “adrenaline overdrive,” Musante said. “There wasn’t any time to be scared.”

Musante, a disabled carpenter, did admit to one moment of panic when the fire reached Barrus’ home on two sides--climbing the hill to the edge of her property while the houses above burned.

“The fire got so hot that it sucked all the air and I couldn’t breathe,” Musante said. “I threw a pot through her (sliding glass) window and stepped inside to catch my breath.”

Finally, the fire burned through the area. The men took a brief rest, gave the grounds a final soaking, and got ready to leave.

“Wait,” said Musante. He picked a board off the ground, grabbed a chunk of charred wood and began to write.

Early the next day, a neighbor made it up to Mystic View and called other residents with the good news that their homes had been spared.

Sydney DeAngelis, a Newport Beach attorney, had watched his neighborhood surrounded by flames on television from a nearby hotel. After hearing that his home still stood, DeAngelis drove to the end of the block, seeing his home--and the sign.

“I don’t know what I did to make God so good to me,” he said slowly, his voice heavy with emotion. “I saw that sign and thought Harry and George were sent by angels.”