Life After the Flames : Insecure, in Denial or in Control, Malibu Fire’s Victims Try to Start Over

For four of its victims, last month’s hellish Calabasas-Malibu brush fire clearly meant material loss--in homes, art collections and irreplaceable, sentimental items, such as the table cloth it took Jim Clements’ mother five years to crochet.

But so far, for most of these dispersed residents of the Santa Monica Mountains, the fire’s emotional resonance has been more complicated--sometimes, even oddly pleasurable.

For Clements, 52, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company, the process of redesigning his destroyed A-frame aerie is an “adventure”--especially at a time when he worries about losing his job to corporate cost-cutting.

For Jonathan and Alison Traister, new parents whose nursery burned with their rustic cabin, the outpouring of kindness after the fire made them feel at home in Los Angeles for the first time.

And for Doug and Rhonda Ware, a 30-something couple with movie-star looks and two daughters, the fire brought freedom from the massive Spanish villa they were building and an expensive lifestyle they had begun to regret.

That’s not to say they haven’t suffered since the Nov. 2 arsonist fire ripped through 18,000 acres, racing from the Old Topanga highlands to Malibu in an afternoon and taking their homes, along with hundreds of others. All have been living out of boxes, wearing second-hand clothes, sleeping fitfully in unfamiliar surroundings. Despite insurance, charity and family support, all fear some financial setback as they gradually replace what they had. The lingering effects of the fire crop up annoyingly, in subtler ways, day after day.

Carla Formica, an intense assistant film editor who lost a much-loved wooden guest house in the blaze, kept meaning to go lingerie shopping if only her grueling work schedule would allow it.

Jonathan Traister wanted to make a simple repair to his 7-week-old son’s stroller--then realized he no longer had a tool box.

Rhonda Ware feels so scattered she finds it hard to buy groceries for more than one day at a time. Her husband, meanwhile, maintains a relentless, upbeat monologue and laughs nervously.

“I’m in denial,” Doug Ware finally says over a cappuccino in the sparse, one-room guest house he has leased in Agoura. “People say I’m in denial.”

No Time Wasted

Denial is a word that also surfaces with Clements, an affable man who wasted no time reordering his life after the fire razed his 20-year home on Saddle Peak Road, at the western edge of Topanga.

Within days of the fire, he found a furnished ranch house with pool and hot tub in Pacific Palisades, a few doors down from a country club. Insurance covers his $5,500-a-month rent.

Left with the two suits and change of casual clothes he had taken on a business trip, he went to a Westwood men’s shop and charged $2,400 worth of apparel in one pop. Then Clements, a gourmet cook, hurled himself into rebuilding, working his way through 25 architectural style books for ideas and attending a seminar on kitchen design.

In contrast to when a beloved sister died in a car crash several years ago, Clements maintains that he was mentally prepared for a destructive brush fire and says its impact has been minimal.

“I knew the house could burn down, I knew it 20 years ago,” he said. “It wasn’t like getting a phone call and someone said, ‘Your sister’s dead.’ ”

This time a call on his voice mail informed him that he had lost a woodsy, comfortable house, one he shared with two tenants and had spent nearly three years building himself. Also gone were eight Persian carpets, four Russian icons, framed 18th-century Chinese fans and a collection of English pewter.

Still, “Something in me just accepted it and let it go,” he says. “I don’t know why.” Clements, who grew up poor in a small town in Texas, says he can handle whatever comes his way.

“I would rather have gone through what I’ve gone through than be living in Bosnia right now, or Moscow,” he said. “My health is important, my close friends are important. All the rest of it is like waves. . . . That’s how I feel intellectually. What’s going on underneath, in my subconscious, I don’t know.”

Life in a Jumble

While Clements’ emotions and plans seem well under control, Carla Formica’s life since the fire has been an exhausting jumble, her feelings of grief brimming over like a messy soup.

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She cried daily for weeks afterward, often as she remembered yet another lost possession or the terror of packing up her car as she watched flames climb the hill toward the one-bedroom Calabasas guesthouse she had rented for most of the last 10 years.

She has been shuttling between her parents’ house in the mountain community of Monte Nido and her boyfriend’s in Playa del Rey, boxes and bags full of second-hand clothes in tow. Putting in 16 hours a day, seven days a week on the final stages of an action film, she has had little time to shop for new underwear, let alone find a permanent place to live.

“It seems like it’s been months . . . like it’s been so long,” she groaned early one morning, wearing hand-me-down pedal pushers, loafers and a red cotton sweater that seemed to fit her size but not her exuberant style.

“To summarize,” Formica sighed, brushing bangs out of her eyes, “I need a vacation.”

Gobbled up by flames were her fish-shaped Christmas tree ornaments, individually wrapped in tissue paper, the music books her late mandolin teacher had given her, photographs she had taken of animals around her home and an antique soft-boiled-egg bowl made especially for infants. It was porcelain and hand-painted with a chick and duck.

“It was so sweet and I was saving it for when I had a baby,” Formica said, who worked as a nanny and camp counselor before following her father into the film industry.

Now, doubtful that she will match her $500-a-month rent (she had no renters’ insurance), Formica is thinking of buying a used trailer and putting it somewhere on the 42 pristine acres where her wooden guest house once stood. Co-workers gave her nearly $1,000 in cash, she was thinking of applying for a low-interest, Federal Emergency Management Agency loan and she heard of some good deals available through bank foreclosures.

For smaller purchases, Formica picked up cash vouchers from the Red Cross, but she has been too tired or unfocused to make much use of them. The vouchers, for items such as clothing, furniture and cookware, must be spent all at once--a rule that has frustrated more than one weary fire victim.

During one late-night attempt by Formica to buy some underwear, sales clerks were not sure how to process the voucher and Formica was bounced from lingerie to the store’s executive offices and back. On another futile shopping trip during her lunch hour, she did not have enough time to decide how to spend the money. Then she forgot where she had parked in the mall garage.

As her plans slowly jell, she has begun to comb the classifieds for used furniture and other necessities. She has spent $95 for a coffee table, a side table and a chest of drawers. She also feels strong enough now to return to the site of her old home and pick through the rubble.

“When I go back up there, I don’t cry,” Formica said. “There’s too much to be done.”

Living Out of Boxes

Jonathan and Alison Traister have also been in mourning for their lost Shangri-La, an old cabin they rented on 30 acres of western Topanga Canyon. There, they had a peach tree, an apple tree, prickly pears and an old-fashioned outdoor bathtub big enough for them to soak in comfortably together with the mountains behind and a grape arbor above.

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“I felt like a Greek god there with my goddess, picking grapes,” said Jonathan, 24, a teacher-in-training.

Alison, a 30-year-old artist, recently dreamed they were back at home and didn’t have to leave after all, only fix the roof in case it rained. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s great! So what have we been worrying about?’ And there was suddenly a great feeling of relief.”

But the dream evaporated into the realization that they were sleeping with their 3 1/2-month-old son, Monty, in a strange bed and living out of six boxes containing clothes, books, baby things and cooking utensils.

For all the disruption to their lives, the Traisters have been philosophical, choosing to dwell on the kindnesses that made them feel truly at home in Los Angeles for the first time.

She is from a close-knit family in England, he grew up in New York City, and both are used to having friends and relatives within walking distance. Unaccustomed to Los Angeles’ car culture and the isolation it can bring, they had often felt disconnected here. Then the fire prompted neighbors, co-workers--even the customers at the restaurant where Jonathan waits tables--to rally behind them with calls, cards and cash.

Strict vegetarians, they have received several free meals at their favorite macrobiotic haunt, the Real Foods Daily restaurant in Santa Monica. He got a free pair of glasses from Lens Crafters.

They stayed the first month, rent-free, at an Oakwood Apartments complex in Marina del Rey that even accepted their yellow Labrador retriever, Dexter, against house rules. Then they moved to an apartment in Santa Monica whose owner they met during the fire, when they were stranded at the bottom of Topanga Canyon near Pacific Coast Highway.

The outpouring has affirmed their view that everyone is connected, each person’s actions affect others, and everything happens for a reason. For them, the fire has been a double-edged sword--”like a cleansing and a mourning,” Alison said, and must be meant as some life lesson.

They have talked about renovating the top floor of a friend’s house in exchange for rent or building a yurt--a Mongolian-style tent--and putting it on their old landlord’s property. But the materials for even the tent would cost more money than they have, and their application for a FEMA loan was rejected because of their low income.

They still plan to apply for a federal grant being offered to fire victims. Despite the hardships and uncertainty ahead, they keep marveling over the help they have already received.

“Truly we are blessed,” Alison said. “We have Monty. We have our health. What else could we ask for?” “Well,” Jonathan said, laughing, “maybe a home.”

Weighty Possessions

Months before the fire, Doug and Rhonda Ware were already questioning their definition of home.

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On a prime Saddle Peak lot whose views extend from Santa Catalina Island to downtown Los Angeles, they were preparing to build a seven-bedroom, 8,500-square-foot Spanish-style house. Doug designed it himself for their extensive collection of California furniture, paintings, pottery and tiles.

Their confidence buoyed by the profits from the sale of their first home and the state’s real-estate craze, the radiant couple had stashed their treasures in a steel bin and were roughing it in a trailer until Doug, 37, a self-employed contractor, could begin the project of his career.

Then the economy turned, and they realized their building costs had tripled. Suddenly they felt weighed down by a mortgage and the baggage of their belongings.

The fire, said Doug, just “made some decisions for us we were unable to make.”

“Part of it freaked us out and part of it liberated and set us free,” said Rhonda, 33.

They are renting a tiny Agoura guest house now. Daughters Lillian, 4 1/2, and Melanie, 3, share a cramped bedroom and bunk beds donated by the family’s church. In the main room, three paces from the kitchen sink, Doug and Rhonda sleep on a futon on the floor, beneath a brooding landscape that is the only painting left of their 18 California oils.

It has been a humbling experience they have met with varying degrees of humor and candor. For Rhonda, the daily routine of a homemaker has dissolved without the anchor of a home. Anxiously twisting her Cartier wedding ring, she admits her nerves are raw, and that she felt a knot in her stomach when she heard Christmas music at the shopping mall.

“For the first time in my life, I understand why some people get depressed during Christmas,” she said. “I wish we could just skip through it.”

Charity has been comforting and uncomfortable for both of them. Doug was thrown a shower by the church men’s club to replace $2,000 worth of lost building tools. Then the congregation passed the plate for them.

“That was pretty embarrassing,” he said.

With the insurance money they expect for their art, their trailer and its contents, and if they can get a low-interest loan through FEMA, the Wares hope to build up their equity in their land. After that, they’re not sure what they’ll do. They promised themselves to make no decisions this year.

Doug has had his moments of despair. The day of the fire, after helping neighbors defend their houses and finally watching his trailer go up in flames, he called Rhonda at her mother’s to break the news and found he couldn’t utter her name.

Then he bought a bottle of champagne and greeted his wife and daughters with the words: “Here’s to a new life.”