Malibu Pulls Together to Get Back to Normal : Rebuilding: Assessment begins, not only of the damage, but of fire’s effects on people’s lives.

Malibu the disaster area shook off the soot Saturday, and who would have expected anything else?

Temperatures nudged toward 70 under blue skies, great for an oceanfront community picnic and not bad for surfing either, and the kids even got a chance to see one of those monster water-dumping helicopters up close. Way cool.

Life was not back to normal, of course. Hot spots still dotted the hillsides, and police and sheriff’s deputies blocked the canyon roads. Only residents with identification were allowed to visit what might be left of their homes.

In all, the arsonous blaze torched more than 18,000 prime ocean-view and canyon acres, killing three people, destroying 323 buildings and damaging 39 others. The Los Angeles County Fire Department placed the preliminary damage estimate at $170 million.

But Saturday there was plenty of hopeful talk about when life-as-Malibu-prefers-it would return. Plans for rebuilding were afloat, and wry jokes about the next disaster--mudslides, perhaps?--united all kinds.

Parents and their children gathered at Malibu Bluffs Park to unwind with their friends and their dogs. And volunteers provided free music and food--even for the dogs. An emergency assistance center offered everything from lipstick and nail polish to clothes and shoes. There were also photocopies of amateur poetry, “Survivor of a Storm,” for the soul.

“Something like this really fractures your consciousness a bit,” said caretaker/musician Bruce Oatway, who was walking along the Malibu pier wearing a homemade T-shirt emblazoned “The Malibu Fire. November 1993.”

“People are assessing their own lives and checking that out. Politically, it’s a nightmare here, but I think something like this brings people back to, ‘Hey, we have our lives and that’s the most precious thing.’

“It’s always been that way in Malibu, because it’s such a disastrous place.”

So Malibu was taking care of its own Saturday, and paying back.

At the chic Bambu restaurant in the Malibu Country Mart, owners Jeanette and Rikki Farr were into Day Four of the great gourmet food giveaway. They don’t plan to start charging until perhaps Tuesday, when all the firefighters have gone home.

The hairiest day was Thursday, when the restaurant served about 2,000 firefighters everything from chicken to swordfish to steak to quail. The presentation wasn’t quite what you’d expect for Malibu, but the firefighters trekking through the place haven’t stop marveling about having it so good.

“This is awesome!” said one, grabbing a fresh scone and coffee, seeing as how it was still a bit early for lunch.

“They (the firefighters) are the nicest people!” said the Farrs’ neighbor, Ruben Mamann, who has been volunteering at the restaurant since Wednesday. “They were thanking us for the food! That’s nothing for what they did, saving our homes.”

Local restaurant owners were stopping by Bambu all morning, offering more free food and asking Jeanette Farr what else she might need. Other residents--movie stars and the more quietly rich--came by with checks. Volunteers swept, washed dishes, and prepared and served food.

One of them, 37-year-old Joseph Rollin, who was homeless before the fire and still is, even landed a job. Because he’s been doing a terrific job as a volunteer dishwasher, he’ll be on the payroll starting Tuesday.

“When you’re honest and good and sincere, things happen,” Rollin said.

A few hours earlier, a driver from Riko Fresh Produce Co. stopped by the restaurant with a truck full of vegetables and jokingly presented Farr with an outrageously inflated bill. But instead of a total, he wrote this: “Too much for you and not enough for me.” Translation: For Malibu, no charge.

“See that guy there?” Jeanette Farr said, pointing to a man headed toward his black Range Rover in the parking lot. “He owns half of Malibu, and he just offered to pay for anything we need at Hughes (market).”

The feeling of togetherness was contagious throughout town, even among those who had never been to Malibu in their lives.

On fabled Surfrider Beach, Mike McCullough, a member of the Rio Dell Volunteer Fire Department in Humboldt County, was trying his best to fulfill a promise he’d made. “I said if I was in Malibu, I was going to go surfing,” he said.

Maybe you could call it that.

McCullough grabbed a wood stretcher board that his engine company uses to rescue people from fires and heaved it against his neck. He’d seen surfers do that in the movies.

Then McCullough, a contractor when he’s not fighting fires, flung himself into the surf. His fellow firefighters, who had battled blazes in Topanga Canyon since they arrived Wednesday, encouraged him loudly from the shore.

Then McCullough coasted in, on his stomach, but with his fist held high.

“I don’t think the locals were impressed, but we were,” said firefighter Ron Horn, who sells insurance in civilian life.

As McCullough and his buddies were walking back to their firetruck--they would begin their 18-hour return trip any minute now--longtime surfer Larry Poteet, a lawyer from Glendale, caught sight and smiled.

“Get some waves?” he asked. “I got a board you can borrow.”

“Does it have straps like this one?” McCullough asked.

It was like that throughout Malibu Saturday; people talked to each other without asking their names--swapping stories about damages, and heroics, and luck, and fate. Like, how can you feel completely happy with a gorgeous day in Malibu when your neighbors and friends were burned out?

At the Jackson Sousa Cross-Training, Fitness and Rehabilitation Center, lawyer Arlyne Willcox was working out for the first time since disaster struck.

“The hard part for us was our friends,” she said. “I have six very good friends who lost their homes. It’s very difficult when you know what they lost, the pieces of their lives.”

Her son, David, 9, said, “I got scared a little, because I was in between both fires. We had our bags out ready to go. . . . I still think about it, all the people who lost their homes, and all the animals.”

Willcox, too, said her mind has been wandering as of late. The other day, near her office in Los Angeles, she was pulled over by the Highway Patrol for making an illegal lane change.

“The officer saw that I was from Malibu and told me she knew I was having a bad week,” Willcox said. “So she let me off.”

Malibu resident Loretta Cain, who has delivered mail to townspeople since 1988, was on the job Saturday, musing about what “back to normal” means.

“It’s somewhat normal,” she said. “We have to get back on the job. But I have homes on Las Flores and Topanga that I deliver (to) that aren’t there anymore. The structures represent people that you won’t see anymore, until they rebuild.”

At Veronica’s, where the moneyed come for facials or a day of pampering with exotic creams, employee Christina LaChimia was still shaken up. The family dog was killed, but their house was untouched. LaChimia took her two daughters down to the Bambu restaurant to help serve food.

“I wanted them to see the other side,” she said. “All the firefighters. They are so humble.”

Still, pointing to the scorched hillside as a testament to how close the flames had come, LaChimia said there was something special about Malibu that would keep her here.

“I would rather stay here and deal with fire than deal with the crime and gangs in the city,” she said.

A few moments later, a young woman getting a pedicure couldn’t be bothered to discuss anything at all. “Do you mind ?” she said, clearly annoyed.

“They think their toes are more important,” LaChimia said. “ They don’t live in Malibu.”

In upper Las Flores Canyon, there was a party under way. The owners of 13 homes spared from the flames doled out hugs, kisses and champagne to the 23 Redding-area firefighters who did the deed.

The grateful residents, many of them in tears Saturday, had searched for “their” firefighters for three days.

“I just can’t thank you enough,” said Lorelei Eisner as she handed bouquets of flowers to firefighters Scott Tavalero, Dana Bennett and Sven Klasteen. Her home was saved when Tavalero and Bennett tossed a burning couch out the door and Klasteen used a chain saw to cut away a blazing section of flooring.

The five-engine strike team from the California Division of Forestry and U.S. Forest Service has been fighting Los Angeles-area brush fires for 12 days. The grimy firefighters planned to drive back to Redding today.

All 23 of them will be back next spring, however. One of the Manzanita Avenue houses they saved belongs to Dodger Vice President Tommy Hawkins. “I’m inviting them down for a Dodgers-Giants game,” Hawkins said. “I promise they’ll have the best seats. It’ll be a hot ticket.”

The Malibu connection was a little different outside the Country Liquor Store at Pacific Coast Highway and Rambla Pacifico. About 30 day laborers mulled around, eyeing each motorist as a potential job. Saturday was the first day that the bus from Los Angeles was able to drop them here.

“I was working construction here when the fire started coming,” said Antonio Diaz, 40. “Then when the flames started down the hill, we all threw water on it.”

He waited a few minutes and asked, “Hey, don’t you think we should get some sort of compensation for that? Because all they paid us was our regular day wage.”

Just then a man in an Isuzu four-wheel-drive pulled up and asked who needed work. He chose two men, no questions asked, and drove away. Those who were left behind assumed their friends would be getting $5 an hour for whatever cleanup work there was.

Then there were the looky-loos. Carl Garcia, 50, had ridden 20 miles on his bicycle from Playa del Rey when his friend, Bill Mikhail, 49, got a flat. They had stopped so that Mikhail could call his son to pick him up.

“We just rode up here so that we could take a peek,” Garcia said. But he stressed that they did so extra-officially, just for curiosity’s sake. Both men are claims adjusters for Allstate Insurance.

Staff writers Bob Pool and Paul Feldman contributed to this story.