YEAR IN REVIEW : A Hell of a Place to Have a House

Autumn firestorms swept across Southern California, burning an epic path of destruction in less than two weeks.

In a single day, Oct. 27, separate fires raged in Thousand Oaks, Chatsworth, the hills of Altadena and the balmy palm-lined streets of Laguna Beach. Less than a week later, on Nov. 2, a fire blazed from the rolling hills of Calabasas and Malibu to Topanga Canyon and over to Pacific Coast Highway, flinging golf-ball-size embers across the road toward oceanfront homes.

The threat of natural disaster is part of the unwritten contract of living here, but in many cases it was an unholy alliance of dry winds and arson that set the region ablaze. The two largest fires, those in Malibu and Laguna Beach, were determined to have been set. In total, as many as 19 of the 26 fires that struck six Southern California counties are believed to be of suspicious origin or arson. On the second day of the Calabasas-Malibu fire, Gov. Pete Wilson stood on Pacific Coast Highway, with fires still burning in Topanga Canyon, and was moved to compare arson to child molestation.

The neighborhoods and the names varied but the stories were the same: residents watching in alarm as fires advanced on their neighborhoods, then rushing to pack up loved ones, treasured belongings and animals. In one Altadena neighborhood full of stables, people hurried down the smoke-filled street with their horses, bridles in hand.

As fire swept across Malibu and into Topanga Canyon, it turned Pacific Coast Highway, virtually the only road out, into a panicked gridlock of cars as residents either fled with possessions and loved ones or raced home to retrieve them.

And there were residents, like townspeople holding off an avenging army, who stood their ground--to the dismay of many firefighters--as if they could wrestle the flames into extinction. They hopped onto their roofs and turned water hoses on their homes and those of their neighbors, refusing to leave until the fire was upon them and, even then, they did not always leave.

Some claimed success. Others did not. Screenwriter Duncan Gibbins, fleeing his home in Topanga Canyon, went back into the inferno frantically searching for his beloved Siamese cat, Elsa. Gibbins suffered severe burns and died the next day, the same day that Elsa was found singed but alive. Hundreds of people called offering to adopt the cat.

Over the course of the firestorms, legions of firefighters--nearly 10,000--fought the blazes, sometimes in 24-hour shifts. Joining city and county firefighters were others from across the state and the West, some of whom drove hours on their rigs to get here. Residents showered them with their gratitude in the form of food, coffee, a place on a beachfront deck to rest--and occasionally a shower.

When the fires were finally contained, 1,241 structures were lost, 197,225 acres had burned, and $1 billion worth of damage had been done. Three people, all from Topanga Canyon, lost their lives. Movie star Sean Penn was left with one less house and the homeless who camped out under cover of shrubs in Malibu were worse off than before.

Within weeks, residents were forced to turn their attention to protecting their hillsides from the threat of rain-triggered mudslides. But the hills are being reseeded, and before neighborhoods had stopped smoldering, people were remaking their lives and their homes.

“Look at this property!” said Frank Morgan as he stood in the ashes of his Carbon Mesa Road home two days after it had burned and as he surveyed the spectacular view, the only thing left that the fire did not take. “If this isn’t a place to have a house I don’t know where is.”