Fire Alarm : After Last Year’s Disaster, Laguna Races to Avert a Repeat

With last October’s monstrous firestorm still a painful memory and the arrival of a new fire season, Laguna Beach officials are trying everything--including hiring goats and state prison inmates--to prevent another disaster.

“We’re doing our best. We’re running as fast as we can go,” Fire Chief Richard Dewberry said.

Mindful that fire damaged or destroyed more than 400 homes here and blackened more than 14,000 acres, residents of this beach community with only two major access roads are jittery amid the hot summer weather and tinder-dry hills.

“The big risk this city has left . . . is the unburned part,” resident Robert Williamson said. “There’s a lot of combustible material up in those hills.”

City administrators and fire officials, some of whom lost their homes in the Oct. 27 blaze, are waging an effort to make sure disaster doesn’t descend upon the city again.

A bulwark of the city’s defense network is the planned extension of a four-mile firebreak that now protects part of the city into a 10-mile break that will eventually encircle the entire town and snake into fire-prone inner canyons.

An unusual work force is being assembled to maintain the existing firebreak and clear other open areas of flammable brush.

About 800 goats have been nibbling at the weeds, foxtails and wild oats at the north end of town, and on Wednesday the voracious animals crossed to the east side of Laguna Canyon Road and began working their way south. The goats are bred by a Bay Area breeder for such assignments.

In addition to the goats, city officials hope to hire state prison inmate crews managed by the state Department of Forestry to further clear the land, something they have done in the past, according to Dewberry.

However, before the firebreak can be enlarged--a task that may take two or three years to complete--federal and state biologists must complete an assessment of the area’s plant and animal habitat to make sure not too much environmentally sensitive brush is removed.

“I know a lot of people wanted us to have it all done by fire season,” Dewberry said. “It’s just not possible.”

The October disaster was deeply felt at all levels of this community, with the blaze destroying the homes of City Councilman Robert F. Gentry, City Manager Kenneth C. Frank and other local officials.

“Everyone seems to be fire conscious, everyone wants something done,” said Api Weinert, the city’s fire prevention specialist. “We’re moving as quickly as possible with the resources we have.”

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Beside enlarging the firebreak, firefighters are completing inspections of more than 1,500 homes next to open-space areas.

The homes and surrounding vegetation are being assessed for fire vulnerability and property owners are being given “helpful recommendations” about how to reduce the fire risk for themselves and their neighborhoods, Weinert said.

If residents don’t resolve the problem, Weinert said, the city has the authority to have the work done and bill the homeowner by putting a lien on the property, as with the city’s weed abatement program.

“If there is a home on the property and a lot of dead brush (and) debris, the Fire Department will proceed to do it that way if the homeowner does not comply,” he said. “We’d much rather see the property owners take care of their own property.”

Dewberry, who has stressed fire prevention at dozens of homeowners meetings in the past six months, said residents are more worried about fire now than at any other time in his 24 years with the city.

“I think most people who live at the edge of wild land are very aware of their vulnerability,” he said.

Despite the city’s shrinking finances, the City Council increased the Fire Department’s budget 6% this year. The city will spend $350,000, the largest single new expense in the budget, on fire prevention.

Laguna Beach is also counting on about $1 million in federal funds to help pay for its fire-prevention effort.

“This year, further fire improvements are probably the No. 1 public safety priority,” Frank said. “The increase in the Fire Department’s budget was by far a larger increase than any other department’s budget.”

City residents have differing opinions whether officials are doing enough.

Ilse Lenschow, president of the North Laguna Community Assn., is satisfied, saying, “We’re happy something’s being done.”

However, Williamson believes the city is acting too slowly, saying, “It’s like they’re nickel-and-diming the thing. We could lose everything that didn’t burn before.”