La Costa Blaze Chose Its Prey With Cruel Caprice

This place is quintessential California: handsome hillside homes built atop canyon ridges, some enjoying panoramic views of the glimmering Pacific and championship golf courses.

With a slight breeze and a cloudless sky Tuesday, this would have been another day in paradise. But in the wake of Monday’s capricious firestorm, this was a place of tears and anger, of streets filled with heroic firefighters, insurance agents offering words of assurance and of a governor declaring an emergency and sharing in the heartbreak.

Sixty homes in this elegant community lay ruined in smoking rubble, the target of the firestorm that started miles away, blew in on a Santa Ana, exploded up canyon walls and delivered itself in a shower of firebrands the size of postcards.

Ten homes on Fosca Street, gone. Eight homes on Cadencia Street, gone. Seven homes on Esfera Street and Bajo Court, gone. Sixty in all, including some in the middle of blocks where no other homes were scorched.

Andy Davis surveyed the ruins of his home, which he had turned his back on just 12 hours earlier as the roof erupted in flames. He said he had to persuade his son--himself a firefighter--to give up the rooftop battle and escape with his life.

“He was up there for 2 1/2 hours, and the house was on fire when I finally pulled him off,” Davis said, his voice cracking. “There’s nothing here to salvage. What a mess, huh? Ah, sunny California.”

His neighbor, Fred Brown, was vacationing with his wife and their two young daughters at the Colorado River when they were called Monday night.

“Our neighbor said there was a 99% chance our house would be gone, so we thought it was a done deal, since it’s right on the side of the canyon,” Brown said. “And we had five or six hours to think about it--the whole drive home. We tried to comfort our daughters--they’re 10 and 8. They worry about their favorite doll, and where they’re going to sleep.”

They arrived home Tuesday morning--and found the house standing. The wooden play structure in the side yard was burned, and a landscaping railroad tie was afire, and the roof had burned in 10 different places.

“But the firemen said they had to save our house, or the entire side of the street would go. And they did. They saved it,” Brown said. “And then you see which homes did burn and that ours didn’t, and it just doesn’t stack up.”

Four blocks away, Richard Davidson shuffled through the soggy remains of the house belonging to his daughter and son-in-law. They were vacationing in Hawaii, heard the news on television and learned the fate of their home when they called family.

Using a cellular telephone, Davidson on Tuesday sought guidance from his daughter on where to look for keepsakes. But everything was destroyed. Jewelry settings had melted, leaving only the stones. A collection of coins, being saved for a donation to the needy, had melted into a single ball. Crystal had welded together in a single, contorted sculpture.

“This is what they’ll come home to,” Davidson said.

Jenny Wirkus, 14, walked almost aimlessly through the backyard of her destroyed home. “We finally had to leave when the embers were catching the garage carpet on fire and I couldn’t stomp them out any more,” she said.

Gov. Pete Wilson, walking down the street to view the damage before signing a declaration of emergency, walked up to the girl. “I’m so sorry,” he told her.

Laura Benvenuto stood in the backyard of her Fosca Street home, soaking in a spectacular view of the ocean while, behind her, only a chimney and a partial wall remained standing. She had recently sent her two grown children off to college, and put the house on the market for $525,000 so she could return to New York City.

“I’ve been crying,” she said, “but you can only cry so much.”

She marveled, she said, at the swiftness of the fire. She had come home from work, seen the smoke miles away and was absorbed on her home computer, sending out e-mail, when her neighbor called.

“I opened the front door and there were embers all over the driveway,” she said. She grabbed the stupidest things before leaving, she said: bills that were due next week. “I didn’t take the photo album. I thought about my jewelry but, when I put my hand on it, I thought, naw, nothing’s going to happen.”

Benvenuto figured the home was destroyed when she tried calling home Monday night and the phone had a busy signal. On Tuesday, her worst fears were confirmed. “My home’s destroyed, but I still have a great view,” she said.

The mystery of which homes would burn, and which ones would not, played out throughout La Costa during the six hours the fire hopscotched through the hills.

At the La Costa Resort & Spa, evacuees spent the early evening hours in the Tournament of Champions Louge, watching the San Diego Chargers on “Monday Night Football.”

But by the time of the late-evening news, anxieties had grown and they jumped back and forth from watching live updates on the fire, on television, and viewing the flames through the nearby panoramic window.

“It’s lit up like a Christmas tree out there, and my home could be one of the ones affected,” Melissa Fisher said.

Many, like Bob Lebeda, refused to evacuate until the last minute. He finally joined in the caravan of neighbors fleeing down the hill to safety when homes on his street caught fire.

He sneaked back to his home later and discovered the front door bashed in by firefighters, every smoke alarm in the house beeping obnoxiously, the outside paint blistered by the heat--but his home otherwise undamaged.

The firefighters had broken into the house to make sure his attic wasn’t on fire, then used his garden hose to extinguish his flaming back fence.

“I’ve got nothing but praise for those guys,” he said.

Harry Moonradian, former owner of Covina Dodge, wasn’t as lucky.

Of all the homes on El Fuerte Street, his--valued at $700,000--was the only one destroyed. It was also, he said, the only one with a wood shake roof and wood exterior.

“We just stood there and watched it burn,” he said. “People were standing there with us, watching the house burn.”