Laguna Is Neither Bowed Nor Broken

In the 11 o’clock hour Wednesday morning, the AM oldies station rolled out “Trouble in Paradise,” a hit from 1960. Had you made it out to Bluebird Canyon Drive in Laguna Beach, no doubt wowed along the way by the beauty of the wildflowers, eucalyptus, pine and jacaranda trees that coat the canyon, you’d have thought the deejays were sending out a mournful dedication.

But weep not for Laguna Beach.

Trouble -- in the guise of an early-morning landslide in the canyon that left 17 homes destroyed and 11 others seriously damaged -- did visit this seaside paradise. But if 2005 is anything like 1978 or 1993, when other disasters struck, the locals will be there to fight back.

This is no phony rah-rah tribute. It’s just the way it is in Laguna Beach, which to the outside world is an enclave of wealthy, isolationist environmentalists, but to itself is a small town where people have one another’s backs.

That, at least, was the vibe I got Wednesday in the hours after the landslide. That, and a unanimous assertion from local residents that they aren’t thrill seekers living on dangerous hillsides just so they can enjoy great views.

Don and Barbara Barda were strolling downtown a few hours after the slide, but it was on their minds. In the 1978 landslide, the Bardas’ house emerged unscathed, but it was close. When I ask if they still live on a hillside, Don Barda says, “We’re sort of living on a rock. We feel like we’re on a good, solid foundation.”

Why risk it? “We like the small-town atmosphere here,” he says. “Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills ... no other city in the county has this village atmosphere.” You can take a 15-minute walk downtown, he says, and immerse yourself in the communal feel of a small town.

It’s that feel that longtime resident Dale Ghere expects to carry the day. He lost his house in the ’78 slide, and the family’s rebuilt house is a couple hundred feet away from Wednesday’s damaged area and wasn’t affected.

“In Laguna Beach,” he says, “anytime there has been a major disaster -- whether it was a flood in the canyon or landslide on a hill or the fire -- this community has pulled together. The help, he says, ran the gamut from schoolkids raising money to residents taking in homeless neighbors.

He insists that canyon dwellers and hillsiders aren’t cavalierly tempting the fates. “They want views,” he says, “but they’re also looking for something they think is safe. Laguna has some kind of an aura to it that a certain group of people like, and they come here to live.”

And they know the lay of the land. “In America, we keep looking at how we can get guarantees,” Ghere says. “And it’s so difficult. It’s just very difficult to develop a lifestyle where everything is guaranteed. And in my opinion, that probably is not even desirable.”

Because it’s a small town, Laguna Beach also has a local rumor mill. And it was churning Wednesday, with some residents muttering about a big house near the landslide area that neighbors had been grousing about because they thought the owner graded too much hillside around it.

Act of God? Act of man?

The residents want to know, but life also goes on.

In Laguna, it goes on differently than in most places in Orange County. Where else could you stop a woman on the street, ask about the slide and have her immediately reply with a reference to a W.H. Auden poem that invokes a Bruegel painting?

That was Sara Kirk’s reply when I asked if people were talking about that day’s trouble in paradise. Yes, she said, but they were also going about their business, much as the sentiment in the Auden poem about disasters happening while people, though not uncaring, go about their lives.

That’s the impression I’ll take from Day 1 of this newest entry in the city’s natural disaster log: no gasps of disbelief or stunned silences from the locals.

Rather, it is this: These things happen here. Now, sleeves will be rolled up and life will go on.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.