Momentum Builds in Laguna : Recovery: As first anniversary of firestorm approaches, burned-out homeowners have shaken off shock and quickened pace of reconstruction.

Nearly every weekday, Martha Lydick visits her fire-scarred Mystic Hills lot, watching with growing excitement as workers make steady progress toward replacing the home she lost one year ago.

Toting a small automatic camera, Lydick, 52, joyfully records each tiny step forward, adding the latest photographs--of concrete caissons, retaining walls or the newest sprigs on her ground cover--to a bulging red album now almost a foot thick.

“Finally, after all this time, we’re on our way home,” she says, her voice heavy with relief. “Now we know it’s really going to happen.”

For Lydick, her husband, Lawrence, and many other victims of last October’s devastating Laguna firestorm, the early frustrations and fears have given way to hope as the din of construction echoes across once-blackened canyons. Heavy trucks lumber along the narrow streets, barren lots sprout contractors’ signs and the buzz of saws competes with the pounding of hammers in a welcome cacophony.

One year after the most destructive fire in Orange County history hopscotched across this seaside community, nearly two-thirds of those who lost their homes have begun the laborious task of rebuilding. The Oct. 27 blaze destroyed or damaged 321 homes here and 120 more in the unincorporated enclaves of Emerald Bay and the El Morro trailer park.

Although only four new homes owned by fire survivors have been completed so far in Laguna--and none is yet finished in Emerald Bay--the pace of rebuilding has quickened lately, city and county officials said. About 70 “fire rebuilds” are under construction inside the Laguna Beach city limits, with about 20 more on their way in Emerald Bay.

Still, as the anniversary approaches, many who lost homes to the flames recall with chagrin the goals they set for themselves early on. Some were certain they would be back in their homes by the Labor Day that passed last month. If delays cropped up, maybe Thanksgiving, they said, but by Christmas for sure.

Instead, slowed by geologic uncertainties, disputes with neighbors--or simply still stunned by their losses--many have yet to break ground. Across Laguna, lots still lie vacant, marked by charred chimneys and blackened trees.

“We were naive,” concedes Robert F. Gentry, a longtime Laguna city councilman who lost both his Mystic Hills home and a Skyline Drive rental property. “None of us knew anything about what it takes to build a house under these circumstances. We’d never done it before.”

The handful of houses rebuilt in time for the anniversary is far fewer than almost anyone imagined. But most interviewed said the pace seems slow primarily because of unrealistic hopes, not unreasonable delays by government agencies, insurance companies, architects or others.

“I’m distressed at how long everything takes, but I can’t blame anybody,” said Cort Kloke, 47, whose plans for his new Mystic View home are scheduled to be heard by Laguna’s Design Review Board on Thursday, the anniversary of the fire.

“I just have never done this before. My expectations weren’t founded on knowledge.”

In fact, in several areas, the Laguna fire victims appear to have outpaced their counterparts who lost homes in the deadly Oakland hills blaze three years ago. Twenty-five people died in that October, 1991, wildfire, another 150 were injured and about 2,700 homes were incinerated, making the size and scope of the blaze far greater than in Laguna.

By the first anniversary of the Oakland blaze, 78% of the fire victims had reached at least partial settlements with their insurers, although many homeowners later were found to be underinsured, according to a spokeswoman for the state Department of Insurance.

In Laguna, 98% of the claims have by now resulted in at least a partial settlement, according to the Los Angeles-based Western Insurance Information Service, a consumer education group affiliated with the industry. Comparable statistics from the Department of Insurance will not be completed for several weeks, spokeswoman Candysse Miller said.

In Oakland, one year after the fire, 38% of those who lost their homes had filed the paperwork required to start the rebuilding process, according to city officials. Now, at the three-year mark, 75% of the dwelling units have been rebuilt or are under construction.

In Laguna, one year later, nearly two-thirds of those whose homes were destroyed, or 189 of 286 households within the city limits, already have embarked on rebuilding. In Emerald Bay, nearly half of the 60 destroyed homes are in the process of rebuilding. And in the El Morro Beach Mobile Home Park north of Laguna, owners already have replaced 34 of the 40 trailers consumed by the flames.

“From everything I’ve heard, people have been much better off in Laguna,” said Robert Bruce, publisher of the East Bay Journal, a newspaper that he started as the Phoenix Journal, dedicated solely to survivors of the Oakland blaze.

Bruce, who lost his home and nearly everything else in that fire, helped lead seminars last year for fire victims in Laguna and Altadena. His newspaper also organized a buddy program that matched families in Oakland with those in similar circumstances in three burned-out Southern California communities, including Laguna.

In most cases, rebuilding delays for Oakland fire victims involved insurance problems, but with few exceptions that has not been a major issue in Laguna, according to city officials, community leaders and fire victims.

Instead, the most common reasons for delays in Laguna involved disputes among neighbors--often stemming from fire victims’ desires to replace their burned-out homes with grander dwellings--as well as geological concerns raised last spring about the stability of several charred hillsides. In Emerald Bay, architects and builders complained of a bottleneck in obtaining grading permits from the county.

And some fire victims have simply been unable to cope yet with their losses or with the myriad decisions that come with rebuilding.

Newport Beach architect Brion Jeannette, who is designing new homes for five clients, suspected that something wasn’t right when some of his clients couldn’t come to grips with simple design decisions.

“Normally, people can decide pretty quickly on what kind of faucets to use in the bathroom or what color for the kitchen counter,” Jeannette said. “But it was really difficult for some of them to get going. Little decisions started to become major decisions.”

Jeannette said he eventually realized that even though fire victims had engaged architects, builders and interior designers, many were still traumatized by the loss of their homes and belongings. Some of his clients are only now “coming out of it,” he said.

Patsy Dickerman was one Laguna resident who had been through the regrouping and rebuilding process before. In 1969, a fire destroyed her home in Austin, Tex.

“The fact that I’d been through it before meant that I understood what was going to happen,” she said. “I learned that things can be replaced . . . and if you were not hurt, and nobody you loved was hurt, then a fire is just a major inconvenience. Things will get better.”

From the start, Dickerman, 45, gently counseled her husband, Jim, not to spend time searching through the ashes of their Vista Lane home. “I told him that looking back only hurts,” she said. “It keeps you in the past. And from that day . . . we focused on moving forward.”

Two days after the fire, the Dickermans leased a house in Laguna Beach. Within weeks, they had hired a builder and an architect. In March, they received their building permit--the second of about 75 that so far have been granted to fire victims preparing to rebuild. Their new home is expected to be completed in January.

But others who hoped to return home relatively quickly ran into opposition from an unexpected source: their neighbors.

Soon after the fire, city officials encouraged property owners to build homes of about the same size as before, but allowed them to increase the size up to 49% without a design review, if they could show they would not block views or infringe on their neighbors’ privacy.

If they chose to build homes that were even larger, they were warned, they would have to endure Laguna’s lengthy design review process.

Still, about 80 of the fire victims so far have gone through design review hearings or signaled their intention to do so. Of those, 30% to 40% have been marked by bitter conflicts with neighbors, usually concerning view obstruction, said Bob Chapman, chairman of the Design Review Board.

Marsha Bode, director of an umbrella group formed to help the fire victims, considers the neighborhood disputes the single most distressing aspect of the fire’s aftermath.

“Some of these hearings have been really acrimonious,” said Bode, who heads the Laguna Fire Relief Coalition. “Now, in most of these cases they’re going to have to live next door to each other and try to forget about it.”

The progress of yet other homeowners was blocked by a landslide scare in three fire-damaged neighborhoods, Mystic Hills, Temple Hills and Canyon Acres. Geologists discovered evidence that led them to believe that ancient landslides might exist under some of the burned-out lots. For a time, the issue threatened to derail the rebuilding plans of scores of fire victims and is still delaying a handful.

The landslides, which were later found to be smaller than originally feared or not to exist at all, prompted emotional, angry meetings between fire victims and Laguna officials, particularly after the city imposed a building moratorium while geologists investigated the hillsides.

In the end, most residents were allowed to rebuild, but in Mystic Hills, about a dozen property owners are still unable to move forward because of continuing uncertainty about the stability of their lots. Some, like longtime Laguna residents Polly and Sol Sloan, have decided to buy homes elsewhere rather than wait for the outcome.

Polly Sloan and others have criticized Laguna Beach officials for being overly concerned about liability and unnecessarily delaying the return home of many fire victims.

“There’s been a lot of equivocation on the part of the city and some of the geologists,” Sloan said. “It’s clearly very important for them to protect their own interests, more important than to get these property owners back in their homes.”

Laguna City Manager Kenneth C. Frank strongly defends the decisions, saying the city would have been irresponsible to have allowed property owners to rebuild without first investigating geological evidence that appeared to point to ancient landslides.

“I think the complaints were unfair, although based on legitimate fears and uncertainty,” Frank said. “I think we did exactly what we should have done.”

In fact, on most issues--and in some cases, including the landslide question--many fire victims give the city high marks for its handling of the crisis, especially its efforts to streamline the rebuilding process.

“Given that there were surprises and unknowns they couldn’t control, I think they’ve done a good job,” Bode said. “There’s been a real spirit of goodwill.”

For instance, city officials decided early on to waive most rebuilding fees for fire victims. They tried to accelerate the process too, reducing the number of projects that were required to go to design review. Additional staff was hired for planning and zoning, and a San Diego planning firm was engaged to help with the workload.

In all but a few cases, Frank said, the city has managed to keep a promise to maintain a five-day turnaround time for the plan-checking phase of the process.

“This is not a major city and, given that a fire of this sort is not an everyday occurrence, I think the planning that went into the city’s efforts was quite solid,” said David Horne, a fire victim who heads the activist Mystic Hills Homeowners Assn.

Builder David A. Scholar, whose projects include an award-winning house for fire victims Doug and Rebecca Wood, agreed, saying the city has been good at keeping its promises. “They’ve stuck to their original commitment to streamline permitting,” Scholar said.

Martha Lydick, whose rebuilding was held up during the landslide investigation, confesses to having harbored less friendly feelings toward city officials during the six months she and her husband, Lawrence, a U.S. District Court judge, were forced to wait for a building permit.

But the day they got it, on Aug. 25, “my shoulders came down,” she said. “I guess I was constantly prepared for battle.”

And now that the construction has started, Lydick said she is focusing on the positive, reinforced by her daily visits to the steep hillside lot and the beautiful home she expects to move into next spring. Her goal, she says, is to watch the fireworks from her house on July 4.

Rebuilding a City

Last autumn’s fire destroyed or damaged 441 homes in Laguna Beach and the surrounding unincorporated areas. As of Friday, only four homes have been completely rebuilt and fewer than 100 building permits have been issued.

* Homes destroyed: 286 within city limits

* Homes damaged: 35 within city limits

* The toll in unincorporated areas: 120 homes destroyed or damaged

* City zone plan checks: 189 applications submitted

* City structural plan checks: 114 applications submitted

* City building permits: 75 issued

* County building permits: 18 issued

* County plans: 10 have been approved or filed

Source: City of Laguna Beach

Researched by CAROLINE LEMKE / Los Angeles Times