Aid Came as Quick as the Flames to Laguna

With the fires squelched and the air slowly clearing over Laguna Beach, area residents are remembering the neighbors and strangers who saved animals, brought help or provided inspiration.

Diane Crain thanked pool-cleaner Tyrone Baumer who, making his usual rounds in Emerald Bay, suddenly found himself watering roofs and saving dogs from vacant homes as 40-foot flames swept down Emerald Canyon.

“I thought of animals being in the house with no people,” Baumer said. He knew his customer was out of town and her two dogs were locked in the house.

Within minutes, Baumer, 38, had rescued the dogs and climbed the wall of a neighboring house to coax Crain’s frightened golden retriever to safety. He took four dogs in the back of his camper truck and an elderly resident in the front as he fled Emerald Bay.

“He heard my dog in a complete panic, locked in my house,” said Diane Crain, who was at the movies when the fire began. She credits Baumer with saving her dog. Across the street, a neighbor’s dog died from the smoke.

“You think about possessions and things, but the one thing I was just sort of panicking about was getting to my dog,” she said.

Baumer was just one of many unsung heroes who performed miracles small and large. Their feats were told by readers who called TimesLink to record their thanks.

Crain also had a priceless art collection to save. In the midst of the smoke and confusion Laguna Beach interior designer Pierre Poisson, 52, appeared.

“I was trying to load my car with these great big paintings and he helped me,” Crain said.

“He just rode up on his mountain bike in front of my house. I had never seen him before,” Crain said.

“She just looked scared to death,” Poisson said. “People were running all around. The panic was unreal.”

The next morning Poisson rode his bike up the hill to check on Crain and her mentally disabled brother. He brought them coffee.

“She started to scream when she saw me on my bike with the coffee, and she jumped up and threw her arms around me,” he said.

Chiropractor Gary Arthur thanked his friend and self-styled magic-man Wave Baker, who performed a wind dance in Arthur’s back yard that seemed to stop the fierce Santa Ana winds that fanned the fire.

“He did the wind dance to try to get me focused,” Arthur said.

“We took a minute and we prayed together and asked God for his help,” Arthur said. Through their combined efforts, the residents of the 700 block of St. Ann’s Drive in Laguna Beach saved their homes from the blaze, he said.

Amid praise for the valiant efforts of shamans, swimming pool cleaners and neighbors, one Laguna Beach resident praised city officials for hiring a herd of goats to eat the dead brush off the slope behind his house--a move he believes saved his house.

“I think it’s a real notable thing the city did as far as fire prevention,” said Michael Chozen, 35, a systems consultant who lives on Park Avenue. Chozen tipped over 14 garbage cans filled with water to save his house from the flames, but the goats are what he really thinks saved the homes on his block.

“It was an intelligent and creative solution . . . a kind of green solution to the problem,” he said.