Just Counting Their Losses--and Blessings

Decked from head to toe in donated clothes, Paul and Kitmen Gunther sat Monday in the living room of a friend’s home trying to cope with the enormity of their loss one day after their hillside home collapsed into a ravine.

Although they carried homeowner insurance, along with earthquake insurance, the Gunthers have been told that landslides, as “acts of God,” are not covered.

“People look at my calm demeanor and don’t think I’m freaking out, but it all sunk in yesterday,” said Paul Gunther, 36. “I realize full well what we’ve lost, but we have to, in the American spirit, move on. There’s no choice.”

But they are heartened by the outpouring of community support from their neighbors and others moved by their crisis. Donations of clothing, shelter, even a crane to sift through the rubble, have flooded in. A trust fund has been set up at the Laguna Presbyterian Church to help the family.

The early morning landslide, prompted by storm-saturated earth, began with little warning. Paul Gunther had awakened at dawn Sunday after hearing “popping and creaking” noises. Realizing that something was terribly wrong, he woke his wife, and together they grabbed their 3-year-old daughter and 18-month-old son and ran.

Within 45 minutes, as they watched helplessly, their home buckled in half, and then plunged into the ravine behind it, stopping within a few feet of a neighbor’s house.

The family spent Monday retrenching from the disaster and counting their blessings.

“I’m just so grateful that we’re alive,” said Kitmen Gunther, 34, a financial analyst. “I’m so thankful for everyone’s generosity.”

In one corner of Scott and Veronica Sumner’s home, where the Gunthers are staying temporarily, sat bags and boxes of donated clothing and toys.

Offers of assistance have flooded in from the PTA, the Laguna Beach Assistance League, and local churches. City Manager Kenneth C. Frank offered the use of an available home for three weeks.

The Gunthers returned in the morning to the site of their former home to see what belongings they could salvage. City officials were still drilling holes in the hill to determine if the earth was still loose, prohibiting the couple from reaching the remains of their home. The afternoon was spent meeting with officials from the city as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We’re just trying to regroup,” said Paul Gunther, a Fountain Valley businessman. “If we can recover anything at all, we can try and restart our lives. It’s not just been a financial loss, it’s emotional losses as well. We lost things . . . that can never be replaced.”

The 3,600-square-foot home and its belongings are valued at $600,000.

The Gunthers said a geological report was done before they bought the home three years ago, and that they were told then that the land was stable. They said they had also gotten a report from the city in 1995 after a landslide destroyed two homes on the street below them that the area was being shored up.

“This was a total surprise. There were no previous fears in this area,” Paul Gunther said.

But the couple remain convinced that Laguna Beach will remain home to them, and are already making plans to rebuild on the site.

“Laguna is a wonderful place,” said Paul Gunther. “The amount of help that we’re getting from the neighbors and others prove that. We’ll be staying here.”

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Donations can be made out to the Laguna Presbyterian Church in care of the Gunther Family Trust Fund, 415 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach, CA 92651. Information: (714) 494-7555.