From Flames to Freedom, Victims Finally Find Peace : Recovery: Ex-Valley couple mixes environmentalism with survivalism in their escape from fires and temblors.

There are no mini-malls here. No drive-by shootings, no graffiti, no obvious social unrest. More importantly, brush fires are unheard of, seismic activity appears dormant and any disasters in this trendy artists’ haven are the exception, not the rule.

Just the place for Jonathan and Alison Traister, a young Topanga Canyon couple left homeless by the Malibu blaze. They sought refuge in a Santa Monica apartment house, only to have it shift off its foundation during the Northridge earthquake.

Homeless again and badly frightened, the Traisters fled Los Angeles four days later. With their baby, Monty, and Labrador retriever, Dexter, their herbal tinctures and artists’ brushes, they set out on a journey east in search of shelter.

They lived in their van, at a Sikh ashram in Phoenix and on an organic farm so far up a treacherous mountain road that “by the time we got there,” Jonathan quipped, “we had to buy their herbs ‘cause we were so stressed out.”

Finally, it came to them during weeks of wandering: Build an Earthship. With walls of recycled tires and a thick stucco skin, relying on solar energy and its foundation sunk deep within the ground, the bunker-like Earthship would seem impervious to fire and quake. The concept cried out to their post-1960s environmentalism and post-Los Angeles survivalism.

And so the Traisters made their way to Taos, the remote village at the tail of the Rocky Mountains where a hippie architect invented the Earthship 25 years ago and where, today, a whole tract of them is being planned on a sagebrush plain just west of the Rio Grande Gorge.

Said Alison: “We are rectified pioneers.”

The Traisters were among the fire victims profiled in The Times last December who had lost their homes and belongings in the Nov. 2 Topanga-Malibu blaze. The others were:

* Jim Clements, an easygoing sales manager for a pharmaceutical company. He continues to rent a luxurious ranch house in Pacific Palisades while he rebuilds his own home on Saddle Peak Road, savoring the process of designing and decorating.

* Carla Formica, a film editor, who had to be rescued from a post-fire flash flood last winter but has otherwise settled into a new guest house in Calabasas, not far from where she used to live.

* Doug and Rhonda Ware, who are trying to refinance their six-acre lot on Saddle Peak Road, where they had once planned a large home. But even before the fire, they came to regret the burdensome mortgage for the land. They have decided not to return there and have been struggling with the recent deaths of close friends.

But none, it seems, were as buffeted by disaster as the Traisters.

After the deadly, $375-million brush fire razed their rented cabin off Old Topanga Road, the family drifted from one friend’s house to another, boxes of secondhand clothes and housewares in tow.

Jonathan, 25, had been waiting tables while he studied to become a teacher. Alison, 30, hand-painted T-shirts and wall-hangings. Between their modest income, their big dog and their baby, now 8 1/2 months old, they could not find a place to live that approached the rustic beauty they had enjoyed.

One plan after another fell through, including pitching a yurt--a large, animal-skin tent--on their former Topanga landlord’s property.

“I felt like I was trapped in a place not meant for me,” said Alison, a native of England with long, dark brown hair and a poetic sense of language.

“And nothing was opening for us,” added Jonathan, an affectionate young father with a sandy-blond ponytail and lively blue eyes.

On Jan. 16, the day before the earthquake, they moved to a friend’s apartment in Santa Monica. When the 6.8-magnitude temblor struck, glass windows shattered on one side of them and a brick wall crumbled on the other as they clung to each other in bed.

The lights were out. Sirens wailed. They smelled gas, and the building was making cracking sounds like crushed paper or glass. As they made their way by flashlight down sagging stairs, a nearby building exploded. “It felt like a war,” Alison recalled.

It took them four days to pack what few belongings they had left--or had bought with Red Cross vouchers after the fire--and shove them into their Jeep and van. Then, without saying goodby to friends or co-workers, they embarked on the adventure of their lives.

“Jonathan and I didn’t have a clue what we were going to do but we had to leave California,” Alison said.

Their first night on the road, in the border town of Blythe, the big rigs rumbling past their motel sent them leaping out of bed.

In Phoenix, where Alison had two art shows coming up, they persuaded a community of Sikhs to let them stay on their ashram, where they soon became known as “the earthquake victims from Los Angeles.”

They traded their Jeep and van for a camper van and pressed deeper into the Southwest. They went to an Indian sweat. They spent two days at a place called Reevis Mountain Farm, a community of organic gardeners connected to the world by a steep, 17-mile dirt road.

They reached Snowflake, Ariz., where some people they know are building an Earthship. By then, the Traisters knew they wanted the same kind of home, but not in Arizona. “Too close to California,” Jonathan said.

Devised by Taos architect Michael Reynolds and inspired by the region’s native adobes, Earthships are designed to recycle non-biodegradable materials such used tires and aluminum cans and to work as self-sufficient, solar-powered units.

The tires are packed with plain dirt from the excavated building site--no water, no concrete. Then they are stacked into heavily insulated walls with tin cans as filler, and slathered in thick coats of adobe mud.

All Earthships face south, their long walls of solar panels flooding cave-like interiors with bright light. Huge cisterns collect rain and snow, and the “gray water” byproduct of bathing and cooking irrigates lush planters at the solar windows’ base.

Even human waste is recycled to a spreadable, ashen fertilizer.

The net effect is like living in a greenhouse whose smooth, sandcastle curves--often decorated with colorful bits of tile and glass--recall the work of Antonio Gaudi, the fanciful, early 20th-Century Spanish architect.

Though Reynolds’ clients include actors Dennis Weaver and Keith Carradine, his populist vision calls for providing pleasant, affordable housing to anyone willing to buy his generic Earthship blueprints, find their own tires and build their homes themselves.

It is an idea tailor-made for the Traisters, hardly the first urban refugees to be charmed by Taos. The village’s dramatic landscape, rich Native American culture and alleged spiritual hum similarly drew D. H. Lawrence and Georgia O’Keeffe.

This month, barely two weeks after arriving, the Traisters joined the first dozen or so homesteaders to buy into the Greater World, the 680-acre site 10 miles outside Taos where Reynolds has planned 100 Earthships of varying size--a sort of New Age Levittown.

For about $6,500 down (Jonathan’s mother has loaned them some money), the Traisters are the proud owners of plans for Generic A, the smallest Earthship available with 1,000 square feet of livable space and 50-foot setbacks.

They also get a plot of land with a million-dollar view of the Sangre de Christo Mountains and set among acres of silver-green sagebrush that scent the air with spice after a rain. If construction goes smoothly, the total cost should be about $30,000.

“We had a calling to come to Taos,” said Jonathan, grinning as he and Alison measured out their lot.

He misses the Waldorf School in Santa Monica where he interned, and his friends at the health-food restaurant where he waited tables. She misses the beach. But so far, neither regrets leaving Los Angeles.

“This is our survival thing, our hypervigilant thing,” Alison said.

Jonathan plans to build most of the Earthship himself. Alison plans to support them by making and selling her T-shirts and wall-hangings. They’ll take turns watching Monty, splurge occasionally at the Wild and Natural Cafe, and sleep in the recently bought camper they’ll park on their land.

Jonathan figures they’ll need 500 tires. So far, he’s collected about a dozen, their meager pile not phasing him in the least.

“I only need 488 more.”

*

Nothing could be farther from the Traisters’ life than that of Clements, whose routine scarcely missed a beat after the fire razed his A-frame home and art collection in western Topanga Canyon.

Insurance has covered his $5,000-a-month rent for a spacious house with a pool in Pacific Palisades, where the early-morning earthquake caused so little damage that the easygoing Clements showered, dressed and drove to Los Angeles airport for a business trip.

Only when he arrived at the closed airport did he turn on his car radio and realize that freeways had collapsed. At that point, he drove to his property on Saddle Peak Road and chopped wood for a couple of hours.

Insurance also amply covers the cost of rebuilding a fancier version of his home. This month, his architect was putting finishing touches on plans that include stone floors and granite kitchen counters, cathedral ceilings and decks on both levels.

Clements, a divorced and dapper 53-year-old, grew up poor and still mourns the sudden death of a beloved sister years ago. With that perspective of dark times, he has not wrung his hands in despair over his material losses. He has treated the fire as nothing more than a chance to get an even more impressive house that requires less maintenance. He appreciates fine things, but he can live without them, too.

Shopping leisurely for the perfect Persian rug, sifting through architecture books and taking a seminar on kitchen design have all been pleasurable pastimes for Clements, a gourmet cook.

“It’s like I sold everything, in essence. That’s how I think about,” he said.

*

Like Clements, Formica experienced the earthquake from the safe distance of Calabasas, where she was house-sitting on a hill as she watched the lights go out in the San Fernando Valley.

But the emotional Formica had barely recovered from the fire when she was caught in a flash flood in Malibu Canyon, as the winter’s first rain melted naked hillsides.

She had begun wondering why the cars in front of her were making illegal U-turns when, before she could do the same, a tidal wave of rocks, mud and tree branches slammed into her Volkswagen Rabbit, locking it in gear.

She was saved by a passing county bulldozer whose driver pulled in front of her and held back the torrent, enabling three other men to lift her car and clear the debris.

Her car still bears traces of the mud but Formica seems to have slowly shaken off that experience as well as the fire.

After a frustrating apartment hunt, Formica, 31, finally found a sunny guest house surrounded by rosebushes. It is near her parents’ home in Monte Nido, her two sisters in Malibu, the burned Stunt Road cabin where she spent most of her adult life. It is where she sees herself remaining.

Everything in her new home is secondhand because most of her belongings burned. Nothing matches, but she doesn’t care. “That’s kind of what gives it the charm.”

She has taken a break from film editing for now, choosing to earn less and relax more. An avid fisher, she works several times a week on the Malibu fishing charter Aquarius. She also prepares and serves food for two catering businesses.

“I’m broke, but I’m happy,” she said, adding that her plans include nothing more than to “catch some fish.”

“I’ve gotten really good at taking things as they come,” she said.

*

The Wares are struggling to do the same.

Since the fire, Doug’s grandmother and several friends have died. During one particularly trying weekend, the couple attended two funerals.

“I guess old people are used to having their friends die all around them, but we’re not,” said Doug, who is 38. Rhonda is 34.

They are still renting a tiny guest house in Agoura, where daughters Lillian, 5, and Melanie, 3 1/2, share its single bedroom. Doug and Rhonda sleep on a futon in the main room.

They have applied for a Small Business Administration loan with the hope of refinancing their burned Saddle Peak lot, vacant now but still costing them 17% in interest and $1,600 a month with property taxes.

Doug, a contractor, said he is working more than ever to make up for a slow economy. Their cramped living quarters make it impossible to get any administrative work done at home so that keeps him away longer, too.

They are thinking of seeing a marriage counselor.

They’re not sure where they’ll end up living but it will be in or near Los Angeles, where they grew up. Before the fire, they had often talked about leaving for places with less crime and congestion. But Doug said that now, oddly, he likes Los Angeles more than ever.

“I just had the realization that no matter where you go, you’ll have something you don’t like,” he said. “The snow. No great little restaurants. Seattle has rain. Here we have the best of a lot of things, even with fires and earthquakes and stuff. I don’t know. That just kind of makes it all the more exciting.”

What they are certain of is that they will not build the 8,500-square-foot, Spanish-style house once planned for the lot. Nor will they return to the isolated, if panoramic, setting--living instead near family, friends and other people with children.

“I think we learned a lesson,” Doug said. “A community’s not too bad.”