Nature’s Worst, and Worst of Human Nature

For a while there, it seemed like the great Laguna Beach fire had brought out the best in human nature. People tried valiantly to save their homes, and the homes of those around them. Neighbors banded together, helped each other, bonded by the rising curve of tragedy. Professional firefighters, rescue and paramedics showed the stuff of which they are made--guts, brains, stamina--in a thousand unheralded battles against an unforgiving enemy.

Various government agencies sent varying amounts of money. Local leaders did what they could to make reconstruction a legitimate goal rather than something that would vanish with the last of the smoke. Insurance companies dispatched adjusters, set up emergency service vans downtown, and were--at least to my eyes--very much on the scene and ready to help. Everybody from the Red Cross to the Baptist Men were there, doing what they could. GTE set up free phone lines for people to use; the Orange County Bar Assn. had people offering legal aid; tons of clothing and food were donated and given away. The churches were places for refuge, food, clothing and spirit.

With the possibility of losing all our worldly belongings, we began to value more those things that can’t be burned away: love, trust, generosity, not to mention all those things--such as houses--that can. As with most cliches, the one about disaster bringing people together has a lot of truth in it.

Of course, with every blessing comes a curse, which in this case took the form of gawkers and hustlers who descended on Laguna Beach that weekend like a biblical plague. There are few places on Earth where human beings are more irritating than in a tourist town, unless it’s in a tourist town that has just been made more interesting by catastrophe.

The Saturday after the fires, Laguna Canyon Road was bumper-to-bumper with cars, many of which were stuffed with camera-laden tourists who jammed town for the specific purpose of turning the tragedy of others into personal entertainment.

I sat in the street window of the Marine Room and witnessed them, pointing, shooting film, recording the aftermath for future viewing. A fight broke out on Ocean Avenue. A short man and a woman in a lame dress and impossibly high heels wobbled across the street against the Don’t Walk light, causing the usual fender-cruncher from which unskilled pedestrians--people who are too dumb to even walk intelligently--always manage to escape unscathed and unrepentant.

For the most part, the bars and restaurants were quiet. These tourists, the bottom feeders, hadn’t come to eat, drink and be merry, but to see the results of a natural disaster much the same way as they’d watch a movie or a TV show.

At least one chartered tour bus arrived from Los Angeles County just two days after the last flames were quenched, disgorging into town a load of what one could only assume to be the terminally idiotic. Unfortunately they blended in perfectly with the other gore-hounds and could not be deported forthwith.

Word of the fun of post-fire Laguna must have spread, because, two weeks later, on the first weekend of November, the moronic parade up and down Laguna Canyon Road was even worse. As a seven-year resident of the canyon, I can attest that no art festival, Fourth of July, or beautiful August Saturday has in recent years drawn more people to Laguna than did our 16,000 acres of scorched earth and 350 cremated houses.

I witnessed some dozen “classic” cars locked in a motionless line on the canyon road, bound for town--old cars done up perfectly for a tour of the ruins. It seemed a testimony to the IQ of the car clubbers that they’d drive for God knows how many miles to sit in a traffic jam, looking good, noting the highlights, their dates/wives/children beside them duly impressed with the nothingness just outside their classic windows.

But the first-place award for swinishness has to go to the enterprising souls who actually turned pro after the fire, driving around with newly painted “Acme Creative Reconstruction Services”-type signs on their trucks. Advertising flyers seemed to fall from the sky like ash, landing on telephone poles, kiosks, bulletin boards, fence posts, windshields.

These gentlemen capitalists billed themselves as anything that might look helpful to a fire victim. There were so many of them around that it made the papers, and the cops could hardly run them out fast enough.

It was a little hard for me to imagine how the true fire victims--those who had lost all the materials of their lives--must have felt about the gawkers, the hustlers, the newly activated tourist trade. My own resentment ran a bit high, even though by the larger standards I was not a victim at all. In fact, I’ve not driven Skyline or Temple Hills, not toured Mystic Hills or even the street nearest mine--Canyon Acres Drive--where much of the destruction transpired. There’s nothing elevated in this; it’s just a simple nod of respect to those less fortunate than I was.

As fall moves into winter and the winds subside and the rain begins to fall, Lagunans are uneasy about floods and mudslides. Last year’s flooding was a little scary except to those whose houses slid away, for whom it was terrifying. There may be more of that this winter, when our many acres of defoliated earth will repel the rain straight down the canyons and into town. Already, during last week’s brief rains, mud has gushed into several homes and severely damaged the Irvine Bowl.

The upside to flooding versus fire? The gawkers won’t be able to get into town, because the streets will be closed. If anyone tries to rent out party boats for flood tours of Laguna, I promise to board every one I can catch up with in a pair of swim fins and lecture the passengers sternly on the virtues of basic good manners. I own a cordless drill; I will not hesitate to use it.