COVER STORY : Six Months After Fire Ravaged Their Neighborhood, Residents of Mesaloa Lane Are Witnessing the . . . : Rebirth of Heartbreak Canyon

It’s an unlikely spot for a picnic breakfast--a charred slab in a canyon of dead trees--where Jane Arvizu lays out a blanket, camping stove and thermos of coffee. In the still of the morning, the 47-year-old feels right at home here--because she is.

Arvizu still goes home to catch the sunrise, just as she used to. That way, she doesn’t forget the solitude of her fire-ravaged Kinneloa Mesa canyon home, which she now jokingly refers to as “The Slab.”

Half a year has passed since Arvizu lost her home of 22 years to the Oct. 27 Altadena firestorm. But she didn’t lose her connection to the beloved canyon that turned ugly, providing fuel for the flames that changed her life.

The firestorm, which burned 5,700 acres and 123 homes in the Altadena area, roared down Arvizu’s street, gutting four of 14 houses and leaving none untouched.

But the hearts of the burned-out homeowners are still on Mesaloa Lane, a hillside street in unincorporated Pasadena with horse stables, one-acre lots and ranch-style houses hidden behind tall trees.

The street’s displaced residents include die-hards such as Dr. Kaye H. Kilburn, 62, who hasn’t let the fire interrupt his morning routine. Almost every day at 7 a.m., he returns to Mesaloa Lane and swims 40 laps in the pool on his bulldozed property, where twin brick chimneys towered for months after the fire as ghostly remembrances.

Marion Lutz forgets herself sometimes and walks zigzag through her empty lot as though the house and all its walls and doorways were still in place--through the imaginary front door, into the family room, out the back door.

Maggie Barnard squirreled away bricks from her crumbled fireplace at a neighbor’s place, so her new house someday will have a piece of the old.

And there’s Arvizu, who wants to hold on to the feeling of home.

“You just have to come up and remember why you’re doing all this,” said Arvizu, who is renting a house in San Gabriel. “Why you’re not saying, ‘Let me just go buy a home someplace and go.’ You’ve got to come back up here and remember you love it up here and that’s why you’re here.”

The owners of all four fire-ravaged homes on Mesaloa Lane have chosen to rebuild rather than walk away from the heartbreak.

None of them have building permits yet, but all are on their way and starting to put together blueprints for their new houses. Each has an endless to-do list, everything from checking with county fire officials on whether the street’s hydrants meet water storage capacity requirements to making sure that gardens forsake fire-loving greenery--pampas grass, juniper and pines--for sturdy summer holly and California lilac.

It’s the same story throughout the Altadena fire area, where only 15 building permits have been issued, mostly for small structures such as decks or walls, said Ursula Hyman, chairwoman of the Eaton Canyon Recovery Alliance Steering Committee. The committee, which represents eight homeowner groups in the fire area, estimates that residents ultimately will apply for more than 300 building permits to replace houses and garages and everything else they lost on that terrible October day.

“It’s going to be a long and somewhat painful process for every homeowner,” Hyman said.

Meanwhile, Mesaloa residents who lost their homes cling to glimmers of hope in the process of rebuilding, buoyed by small triumphs and unexpected kindnesses.

For Arvizu, who has grown children but lives alone, hope came in the form of a stranger’s offering. The stranger, a woman in her 80s, read about Arvizu in The Times--a single sentence about how flames had consumed the wedding handkerchief that she and her mother had carried as brides and was to be passed on for her own daughter’s walk down the aisle in May. The woman picked out an antique handkerchief owned by her mother and mailed it to Arvizu with a letter, apologizing for offering such a small comfort. Next month, Arvizu’s 28-year-old daughter will carry the handkerchief in her Pasadena wedding in front of invited guests, including the elderly stranger.

“We have a new piece of family tradition,” said Arvizu, choking back tears.

Arvizu, who helps run a family restaurant, plans to rent tables and tidy up her Mesaloa Lane property so she can throw a wedding brunch on her concrete slab; she wants her friends and relatives to get a feel for where she’s been and where she’s heading. So far, she said, the road ahead looks clear, with her insurance covering rebuilding costs. An architect has begun sketching designs for the house.

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Down the street, Loren Lutz, 73, never gave up hunting for family treasures, including his wife’s wedding ring. Day after day, the retired dentist sat under the canopy of his blackened oak tree, sorting through bucket after bucket of ashes.

Just last month, he knocked on the door of the 35-foot motor home where the couple is staying in front of their Mesaloa Lane property. As his wife, Marion, opened the door, he opened his fist. There it was--a charred circle of white gold with five intact diamonds, the long-lost ring that reminds 72-year-old Marion Lutz of their wedding day, when her husband whisked her straight from the church in a turquoise suit to a duck-hunting honeymoon near Palm Springs. Now the Lutzes have four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and they want to rebuild a house big enough for family visits.

Loren Lutz, an avid hunter, doesn’t back off easily. He said he once put 39 slugs into an 850-pound grizzly bear that charged him in northern British Columbia. But he is tiring of rebuilding hassles, of jumping through hoops at every step.

His effort to get a building permit for a hay shed, for instance, is taking weeks. First, county officials sent him packing because he didn’t draw up building plans on the right size of paper. Then they picked apart the plans and asked him to interview his neighbors to find out if there were objections to his new hay shed. There have been other hassles, mostly with his insurance company, California Fair Plan, which provides fire coverage to high-risk property owners. The company is offering a $381,000 settlement, less than half the amount that Lutz says he needs to rebuild his 3,200-square-foot home. Lutz said his house was appraised recently at $850,000. But his adjuster, Dennis Farlin, said the Lutzes signed a policy for coverage up to $381,000, so California Fair Plan can only pay that amount.

But Lutz and his wife take joy in small victories such as the rebirth of their prized sago palm. The palm, reduced to a blackened three-foot stump, is showing green shoots, important reminders of rebirth and a little piece of the past. The Lutzes even nixed their architect’s plan to move the palm from its spot next to what had been the front entryway. The way they see it, he should design the house around the palm.

“We’re not going to move it,” Marion Lutz said firmly. “It’s going to stay right there.”

The Kilburns are staying in a rented house near Dodger Stadium. The couple have a building permit to rebuild their pool house where they had planned to live temporarily; they changed their minds when they realized that the structure would be too small to live in comfortably.

They are eager to get back, but the wheels are moving slowly, said Gerrie Kilburn, an administrator for the American Lung Assn. of Los Angeles County. The Kilburns are still working on getting a building permit for a new three-bedroom house, with the kitchen facing the mountains to catch the sunrise and the family room facing the canyon view, which stretches to Catalina Island on clear days--like in the old house.

Meanwhile, life is limping along. The deer are back, bedding down in the Kilburns’ blooming rose garden. Recently, a mountain lion left his calling card on the badminton court in the form of a dead deer. And the couple keep close tabs on their property, lunching often on a redwood picnic table near the pool. It feels right to be home, said Gerrie Kilburn, who knew almost immediately after the fire that she would not abandon the property.

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“You ask yourself . . . if you were not here, where would you rather be?” she said. “And I couldn’t come up with another answer.”

Maggie Barnard, 74, the woman who saved her fireplace bricks, never thought of turning away. She didn’t listen to friends who urged her to take the easy way out and buy her rental house in Pasadena instead of trying to rebuild the three-bedroom, ranch-style house that her late husband designed 34 years ago.

“I want the same thing, exactly,” she said.

Barnard speaks briskly of the fire, saying that the worst is behind her, and she’s ready to move on, especially now that her insurance company and adjuster have agreed to completely cover her rebuilding costs. She’s comfortable in her rental house, furnished mostly with items borrowed from friends.

Friends brought the former grade school teacher everyday necessities, including a bed, a microwave oven and a box of household items such as an extension cord, a stapler and pens. They didn’t neglect matters of the heart, either, digging up copies of her students’ class pictures from the ‘60s to replace the ones that burned. For her part, Barnard brought with her the only possessions that survived the flames--three potted cymbidium orchids--and put them on her patio to remind her of home.

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Back on Mesaloa Lane, the remaining residents are eager for their neighbors’ return and grateful that the sickly smell of scorched concrete and melted rubber is gone. The air is sweet with the scent of fresh lemons and oranges hanging on neighborhood trees, and the street is awash in swaths of color--orange poppies and fuchsia bougainvillea vines--instead of the dreary blacks and grays in the firestorm’s wake.

“It was sickening to see it all black,” said Pat Greutert, whose garden was singed in the firestorm, “but it’s coming back beautiful and better than before.”

Neighbor Harlan Tripp, 71, said the street is quiet, as always, but he looks forward to the buzz of chain saws and the pounding of hammers, signs that life is getting back to normal.

“I imagine six months from now,” he said, “it’ll be a madhouse.”