LAGUNA BEACH : Camp-Out Planned for Fire Survivors

After months of shuffling from relatives to motels to rented houses, dozens of people who lost homes in the October fire will try a different experience this weekend: camping out.

Organized by the Laguna Fire Relief Coalition, an excursion to the San Bernardino Mountains will allow disaster-weary residents a chance to unwind, said Marsha Bode, a coalition director who thought of the idea.

“Everybody looks like they’ve been having a hard time,” she said. “My feeling was, the survivors really needed to take a break from the constant thinking about paperwork and the millions of details that sometimes wake people up in the middle of the night.”

Car pools will begin leaving for Campfire Summer Camp today and will return Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, fire survivors will get a chance to fish, hike and visit with neighbors they may have lost touch with since the Oct. 27 blaze that damaged or destroyed more than 400 homes.

“We’ll eat in a dining hall and we’re going to sing songs and we’re going to do silly things . . . on our own, away from everything,” Bode said. “Most people are just looking forward to having a rest.”

The cost of the camp out will be split evenly between the coalition and the participants, Bode said. As of Wednesday, 55 people had signed up. The coalition is a community-based group that formed immediately after the fire and now dispenses supplies to survivors from a headquarters in the Boat Canyon shopping center.

The camp-out is scheduled for a weekend when some whose homes were lost may prefer to stay in town. The coalition is orchestrating a citywide garage sale Saturday, aimed partly at raising money for fire survivors.

In addition, a special City Council meeting has been scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday to allow residents eager to rebuild burned homes a chance to learn more about suspected ancient landslides that geologists say might lie under some hillside lots.