COLUMN ONE : It’s High Anxiety in the Hills : Canyon residents have always known their rustic refuges were vulnerable to fire. But now the specter of arson sparks new fears and a haunting sense of helplessness.

Outside the Beachwood Market, a cozy community hangout in one of Hollywood’s oldest canyon neighborhoods, a window display case Wednesday sent out an urgent warning.

“This could be Hollywoodland,” declared the hand-lettered sign beside a color newspaper photograph of Laguna Beach going up in flames. “It happened in 1961 and it can happen again.”

It was a message from the local homeowners association, pleading with residents to do the usual to keep the fires at bay--clear combustibles, plant fire-retardant gardens, treat wood shake roofs, get rid of brush. Then it added a final caution: “Be alert for suspicious activity. Many of the fires burning in Southern California were started by arsonists.”

That thought--that some new breed of terrorist or worse, several, were on the loose--is what had Jill worried. As she scanned the alert, the 28-year-old TV writer appeared relaxed, in old flannel shirt, denim shorts and comfy Birkenstock sandals. Underneath, she confided, she was feeling nervous.

“I’m afraid of who this guy is,” she said. “I just think it’s somebody who’s trying to set the whole city on fire--and this neighborhood could be next. . . . This doesn’t have that natural disaster feeling. It has that horror movie feeling.”

Jill--who refused to give her last name in case “this lunatic” could somehow track her down--is nagged by a fear that has crept insidiously into Southern California’s hillside communities. Somebody is waiting for dry, windy days to slip unnoticed into these beautiful canyons and light little blazes that turn into massive conflagrations.

Beloved neighborhoods are being destroyed. And people are looking edgily over their shoulders, wondering: Is my neck of the woods going to be next?

A man in the Chatsworth hills said Wednesday that he spent the previous night staring out his window at flames consuming a ridge several miles away. A Pasadena woman who owns a construction company said she now lies awake at night, gauging which way the wind is blowing and worrying that some arsonist will decide that one of her sites would be a nifty place to start a blaze.

A schoolteacher in Laurel Canyon said her biggest worry is she will be separated from her children in a fire; a television news scene in which a Malibu man was looking for his 5-year-old son was almost too much for her to watch.

“There’s an air of paranoia going around,” said Peter Desberg, a psychologist buying bread and smoked turkey Wednesday morning at the Beachwood Market.

In a region beset by stressful events--earthquakes, floods, riots, racial tension, economic hard times--these arson fires are one more nudge toward the breaking point. People who live in the rustic canyon neighborhoods often view their homes as refuges from the insanity of Southern California, safe places tucked away in the quiet of the hills, a little bit of the country in the city.

Deep inside, they know they are vulnerable to fire. Certainly there are reminders enough: the difficulty of purchasing fire insurance for their homes and the red, black and white “No fires, no smoking” signs that dot canyon thoroughfares.

But most of the time this is a distant threat, a small worry in the back of their minds to be confronted only briefly when inspectors come around issuing notices to clear the brush, then quickly forgotten.

That mind-set changed this past week. Now, the danger cannot be buried and ignored. And the fact that the destruction is deliberate, experts say, makes it all the more devastating.

“The fire risk in the canyons is something they all knew about on some level,” said Lilly Friedland, a psychologist and member of the Los Angeles County Psychological Emergency Team. “But I think realizing that some of the blazes are deliberately set is what is so unnerving.”

The fear of fire--and especially arson--is perfectly understandable when fires are raging on every TV channel, Friedland said. She would not encourage people to underestimate it, or to deny it.

“This isn’t an overreaction,” she said. “The bad part is that there is a copycat phenomenon . . . People who live in the canyons or anyplace flammable have a good reason to be frightened. People have a genuine fear of fire and a totally overwhelming sense of helplessness.”

Said Robert T. Scott, an Encino clinical psychologist who is a consultant to the American Red Cross: “We start feeling a kind of depression because we can’t get on top of all these events. We start feeling a sense of powerlessness. There are so many things we’ve lost control over. This is another event we’ve lost control over because someone is starting it and it’s hard to get a handle on fire once it’s started.”

Above Hollywood in Laurel Canyon, not too far from Beachwood Canyon, Ed Ladou feels unsettled. “You are talking,” he said, “to somebody who’s definitely got the jitters.”

He is sitting in the little eatery he owns, a charming Italian place called the Caioti Restaurant, fiddling with a coffee cup. He says he and his wife recently moved out of Laurel Canyon and into a hilly neighborhood in Chatsworth, to get farther away from the complications of city life.

But then he ran right into the sometimes cruel arms of Mother Nature. Last week, fire burned the mountain around his house. Tuesday night, he looked out his bedroom window and could see Malibu burning. Wednesday morning, with the fires still raging on the coast, tiny flakes sprinkled down on Laurel Canyon, dusting everything white.

“Look at the ash,” Ladou said, peering out the restaurant door. “It makes me feel really sad. We all feel so self-important in our lives, like our lives have so much meaning. And then this fire comes along and it just completely wipes out all that. (Firefighters) are coming from everywhere to try to save our homes, our little, fragile, shell-like existences. . . . “

His voice broke a little, and he blinked before continuing. “You think you have everything under control. But we are as subject to the winds of fire as anything. There is no guarantee that the fire will get put out before it gets to your house, that it is going to touch somebody else and not touch you.”

High atop Mt. Washington, at the headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship, followers are schooled to ignore such fearful thoughts. The perfectly manicured grounds, with a sweeping view of downtown Los Angeles to the south, are where people come to get in touch with themselves and God. Nuns and monks pad about the quiet monastery in peach-colored attire. The gardens are designed to soothe.

Yet even here, it is difficult to escape. On Wednesday, the members remarked on how smoky the air felt, how it was difficult to see downtown. The night before, some of the monks and nuns had toured the property, checking on buildings to make sure everything was intact.

“We believe in pushing those thoughts away,” says Dora Grynwald, a Mt. Washington resident and decade-long member. “We are taught not to think negatively, but it’s hard work, especially when there are catastrophes going on.”

Los Angeles is a tough enough place to live without wildfires. Pile the fear of fire on top of crime, smog, traffic, quakes and the rest and a cumulative effect begins to build, according to psychologists who specialize in disaster.

“When you look at a disaster like this you have to look at what is the emotional climate of the area,” said Scott, the Red Cross psychologist. “We have to look at what this whole city has been through. . . . Riots. The economy. The King verdict. The Denny beating verdicts. Now we’ve got this very bad brush season and someone going around purposely causing fires . . .”

Some fear there is a link.

Kristyn Hardt, a lifelong Hollywood Hills resident, said she has an uneasy feeling when she sees expensive neighborhoods bursting into flames, and she wonders: Is this the work of someone with an ax to grind against the wealthy?

“I hate to say this, but I feel that this possibly could be the result of the verdicts of the past couple of trials (the King and Denny cases.) I don’t know. It’s just a sense. It may not make any sense. But I have a suspicion that someone is very unhappy with the verdicts and decided to make a statement in a way that would draw attention to it.”

Authorities say there is no evidence of that. On Wednesday, investigators from at least four law enforcement agencies picked through the rubble above Malibu, uncovering clues that indicate the inferno was the work of at least one arsonist and may have been started by two white men who were seen speeding away from the flash point in a blue pickup truck.

Yet it is not surprising that people are eager to place blame, said Zanwil Sperber, the chief psychologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who was evacuated from his Topanga Canyon home Tuesday night.

“People want to localize the problem: ‘Somewhere out there is this weird crazy individual,” Sperber said. “We want to lock him out and punish him.” But that, he added, is not the answer.

“It’s a pseudo solution,” he said. “Our culture is full of that. It’s easy to blame someone: ‘When in pain, blame.’ . . . This vengeance is going to put a lot of energy in the wrong place.”

Indeed, psychologists and stress counselors say the best way for people to cope with their fears and anger is to simply do something to take control--clear the brush around your property, assist a neighbor. “It’s helpful to help others,” says Friedland, the psychologist. “Helping empowers the individual. They feel they are doing something.”

Maybe so. But it does little to ease that nagging fear, that somewhere out there, when the winds are blowing, a stranger with some lighter fluid and some gasoline lurks. Back in Beachwood Canyon, in the local coffee shop around the corner from the market, Mark Carnessale, a 36-year-old house painter, summed up the feeling this way:

“It’s terrifying. I think the people here are terrified that they are going to be next.”