After Smoke Clears: Group Hug by the Sea : Community: A Laguna Saturday morning reveals a city struggling to recover as it revels in its rhythms.

By CHRIS WOODYARD

Oct. 31, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAGUNA BEACH — The first post-wildfire volleyball arced over Main Beach at 8:16 a.m. Saturday. Rico Pettigrew and Lee Sandler went on to beat Larry Ball and Wave Baker by a score of 12 to 10 despite being sandblasted by a sheriff’s helicopter making yet another run over the fire-ravaged city.

Cafe Zinc served 300 coffees and sold out of scones by 11 a.m. “I am amazed how happy people are,” owner John Secretan said.

And in the sunny courtyard of the Hotel Laguna, Joseph Blanda married Caren Jansen. The priest compared their union to the grass that will one day sprout from the nearby blackened hills.

Just another day in Laguna Beach? Hardly.

The fire spared the village, but consumed the conversation. Reminders were everywhere--from the musky scent of lingering smoke to the “Discounts for Fire Victims” sign at the Hobie Sports store.

Yet Saturday brought signs that life was getting back to normal in a town still sorting out the damage. Traffic ground to a crawl in the village, weekend athletes resumed jogging, and the tourist onslaught was in full swing by noon.

The fire command post on Main Beach was gone, leaving only a couple of fire patrol trucks to occupy the basketball court. They left at midday and play immediately resumed.

Faces appeared relaxed and smiling, belying the undercurrent of fear and loss remaining after the fire. Some Lagunans carried around wallet-sized albums of fire snapshots like war souvenirs. One man held half a dozen bikers, joggers and beach people in rapt attention as he described how the flames leaped from house to house on Skyline Drive.

It was as if the whole town joined in a group hug. That led to a quandary: how to feel happy about a sun-filled, perfect day in Laguna Beach with vivid memories of a conflagration that destroyed the homes of 330 friends and neighbors. And would Halloween, an occasion that has become the social event of the year in Laguna Beach, be a catharsis or an exercise in poor taste?

“This year, the spirit isn’t going to be there,” lamented Robbie Fein, a tanned accountant who had painstakingly planned her Mouseketeer Annette Funicello costume. “You don’t feel like dressing up and going out.”

But musician Harri Wolf, sipping coffee from a paper cup outside the Fahrenheit 451 bookstore and nightclub, wasn’t so sure. “If it were up to me, I would encourage people to get out and celebrate. This is the nature of the town.”

Saturday night, he predicted, would be a litmus test.

“If this place is not packed and grooving by 9 p.m., then you will know where people’s consciousness are about this whole thing. And I can’t say I blame them either way,” Wolf declared.

The Laguna Beach High School football team did not need any prodding. The 30-player squad--three of whom saw their family homes destroyed in the blaze--battled Century High School in Santa Ana. Laguna lost 31 to 0, but this week it was not the score that mattered. “Football is a wonderful distraction,” noted Century Coach Bill Brown.

Some businesses were already joining the spirit of beginning to put the disaster behind them. For instance, Gary Daverso rejoiced at seeing the return of weekend browsers to the downtown Wyland Galleries, where he works as an art consultant.

“When you suffer a loss, the longer you grieve, the longer it takes to get well,” he said.

Grieving took a back seat to poached eggs at Cafe Zinc, a popular local gathering spot. The ordering line was a dozen-deep at one point.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” owner Secretan said. “I didn’t know whether to make food or not make food.” The response was so overwhelming that Secretan said he had to be careful not to wander out from behind the counter too often because seemingly everybody wanted to tug his ear about their own personal brushes with the conflagration, idling him for an hour at a clip.

Some business owners pressed on despite personal loss. Hotel Laguna owner Claes Andersen issued a press release as president of the hospitality association to “reassure visitors that Laguna Beach is as beautiful and serene as always.” It did not mention that he had been burned out of his own home.

“I’m surviving,” Andersen said in an interview.

Five Feet, one of the city’s most celebrated restaurants, was closed Friday night to all but guests who had made reservations before the fire and to victims of the blaze. Owner and chef Michael Kang, who said the heat he felt while working to save his partner’s house was hotter than anything he had ever encountered in a kitchen, hastily created programs to give free meals this weekend to fire victims.

Kang, in conjunction with other area restaurants, hosted a free lunch for victims. Dishes included prime rib, beef stroganoff, Chinese chicken salad and jambalaya. Lunches will be served again today at the Laguna Presbyterian Church, 415 Forest Ave.

Kang was also handing out vouchers that entitled fire victims to free dinners this weekend at Five Feet and other top Laguna Beach eateries. “Everybody I saw on TV”--homeowners who lost everything--”was a customer,” he explained.

While members of the business community were opening their hearts as well as their doors, some Laguna residents unaffected directly by the fire chafed at having seen their city come to a virtual standstill for two days.

Mary Applegate, who sported a fuzzy doll with a fire hat as her lapel pin, railed at the temporary closing of a restaurant Thursday at the Hotel Laguna and the noisy hammering by a worker that woke her up when other service employees were not being allowed into the city.

“It’s just unbelievable,” she said, fuming. “The people around here were just treated terrible.”

Others were upset at the camera-toting gawkers who arrived to sightsee the ruins Saturday.

“All the sightseers should go home because we don’t need it right now,” furniture designer Loren Harris said as he watched the stream of traffic along Coast Highway. “It should have been closed off this weekend.”

Window washer Rick Arnold, standing next to Harris, pointed to a red truck in traffic that had a contractor’s sign on the side. The out-of-town contractors, he said, are preying on fire victims when they are hurting the most.

Both men said they also suspect that some homeless people might be taking advantage of food and shelter given by the Red Cross that were intended for fire victims.

While many visitors acknowledged they were drawn in part by the disaster, they said they planned to stroll through the village’s shops and other tourist haunts as well. Most pronounced the town to be in better shape than they expected.

“When we saw it on the news, it was like the whole town was on fire,” real estate broker Gene Steciw of Laguna Niguel said between bites on a Swiss almond chocolate ice-cream cone.

It was not the case, as he and other visitors soon discovered. Except for the ravaged hills and homes that most stopped to survey, the placid Laguna Beach that so many have come to know--boutiques, surf, and a life of sandals, shorts and tank tops--had survived.

“People believe Laguna Beach is gone and it’s not true,” said Bob Van Ness, sales director for the Inn at Laguna Beach. “The long-term effects could be severe if people don’t wake up and tell the other side of the story.”

Life goes on.

Times staff writer David Reyes and correspondent Scott Jones contributed to this report.