Scars in a Beautiful View : A Sparkling Day in Malibu Is Marred by Reminders of Flames’ Destruction

The ocean had lured Lenzo Goldstein to Malibu, and on Wednesday it was his only solace.

Goldstein, 51, a liver disease specialist at UCLA, was among the first Las Flores Canyon residents allowed to return to the smoldering hillside Wednesday. In his neighborhood, only one home had survived, and it was not his.

“Everything burned up. Nothing is salvageable,” he said as his 23-year-old son, Jonah, stomped around the spot--now flat and featureless--where their home had stood. Looking inland, the hills were charred black and brittle. So Goldstein looked to the sea.

“Well,” he said, “I still have the view.”

There was no denying it: In all the ways that seaside residents usually cherish, Wednesday was a beautiful, sparkling day. But for scores of people, it was also a day of mourning. Eight residents had been injured in the blaze, two of them critically. Scores of once wonderful ocean-view hideaways had been lost, and as the fire raced eastward, many more were threatened. At least for a moment, a way of life seemed to be in jeopardy.

“We used to look at this as part of paradise,” said Nurit Eleassari, whose house and sprout farm had burned to the ground. Now, she was not so sure.

Still, life went on, Malibu-style. Some returning residents, forced to leave their cars at roadblocks, set off on foot, bottled water in hand, to survey what was left of their property. Restaurateur Piero Selvaggio discovered that his Big Rock Canyon home of 19 years was leveled--”like a pancake.” The owner of the elegant eateries Valentino, Primi and Posto found temporary shelter for his wife and their three children with a friend.

Meanwhile, more than a few Malibu residents holed up at the posh Bel-Air Hotel, where Frank Bowling, vice president and general manager, welcomed them with open arms--and a bargain rate.

“We had scores of calls, one after the other. We said, ‘If things get bad just come in.’ It was a case of gather your pajamas up and come on down,” he said, adding that it got so crowded that he even put evacuees in the $2,000-a-night Presidential Suite (but only charged them $235).

“We just put people in to give a roof over their heads,” he said. “What can I tell you? It might be us one day.”

*

In the waiting room at the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital Burn Center, Duncan Gibbins and Ron Mass had drawn a small, somber crowd. Gibbins, a 41-year-old screenwriter-director, and Mass, a 40-year-old carpenter, had been severely burned when fire engulfed the Topanga Canyon property where they were staying. On Wednesday, their friends gathered to tell them they were loved.

Lynn Linderman, a hair stylist and long-time friend of Mass, arrived just as nurses were dressing his burns. He was burned over 75% of his body.

“He looks like an Egyptian mummy,” she said, recalling how she asked Mass, who is hooked to a ventilator, if he wanted her to rub his feet.

“I said, ‘Shake your head up and down if you want me to,’ and he shook his head,” she said. “He said, ‘I love you.’ ”

Gibbins, who was burned over 90% of his body and was heavily sedated, could not talk, said Jim Piddock, 37, the captain of the Wanderers, an over-30 soccer team on which Gibbins played. Piddock said he had come to deliver a get-well message from Gibbins’ teammates. A doctor told them that, though Gibbins could not express it, his brain waves indicated that he could comprehend.

But as if bracing for the worst, Gibbins’ friends already spoke of him in the past tense.

“He had a big heart,” said Piddock.

Allison Chase, another friend, said, “He was one remarkable man.”

Gibbins died at 8:44 p.m.

*

As the fire continued to spread, Joy Hayward refused to leave her house on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, even when police pleaded with her.

“They have promised not to arrest us, and we have promised to try to be sensible,” said Hayward, who had encircled her house with 10 large garbage cans full of water. In case the fire came barreling down the canyon and she needed to beat a hasty retreat, she had wet clothes at the ready. The outfit was flimsy protection, but it was better than nothing.

Marianne and Joe Luskin, meanwhile, returned to their six-acre property on Stunt Road and found it completely charred, but their house intact. The couple, both of whom work for the Los Angeles Unified School District, believe they were spared in part because they’d cleared their property of dead underbrush.

“The sprinkler, good gardening and God--that’s what saved us,” Marianne Luskin said.

*

In the 25200 block of Malibu Road, college student Wyatt Campbell and a few friends stood outside the home he shares with his mother, a real estate agent. Campbell, 19, had spent the night hosing down the roof. Around his neck was a surgeon’s mouth guard on which he had written “No Media.”

Campbell said he was annoyed with television coverage of the fire that seemed to portray it as glamorous, as something that Hollywood would have dreamed up.

“They should let our little community be itself,” Campbell said. “Too many movie stars have moved in and created huge estates. We’re in the ‘prestigious Malibu’ but we are not all rich.”

*

In Las Flores Canyon, Wayne Hays, 57, had found an injured cat. The executive with a computer services company had not been able to save his home of 25 years on Rambla Orienta. That only seemed to make him more determined to save the singed animal, whose whiskers had curled from the heat.

“The degree of devastation is almost unbelievable. There’s just nothing. This house has been our life. We raised our children here,” he said, as he wrapped the cat in a blanket and jumped into his car. “What are we going to have to do to put our lives back together?”

*

Tuesday night, the mood at the Red Cross emergency shelter at Calabasas High School proved one thing: If it lasts long enough, tedium can overwhelm even panic.

At first, as flames glowed against the sky to the south late Tuesday evening, each straggler who cruised in seemed to raise the tone of hysteria one more pitch. Shivering refugees stood in line to use pay phones, waiting impassively as others wept openly into receivers.

Six hours later, the same people slouched in front of the TV, wrapped in blankets, and trading weary observations--sounding for all the world as though the flames they watched were ravaging someone else’s hillsides, threatening someone else’s homes.

Carolee Hurst, 38, was still dabbing her eyes an hour after she arrived with her 4-year-old son, James. Gerry Hurst, her husband, had refused to evacuate with them, despite the wall of flames descending on the home.

Now, she couldn’t reach him at home. Was he still there? Had he escaped the path of the fire? Would he call? Show up? Hurst, wrapped up like a baby in a woven blanket, hunkered down in a folding chair to wait.

The fire that seemed sure to sweep over her house was something she hardly mentioned.

“I’m not attached to the house, it’s my husband!” said Hurst, a slight woman who twirled beads around her neck as she spoke.

The morning brought welcome news: Her husband had been safe at home all night, sleeping soundly, completely unaware that she had been counting the minutes worrying about him.

Exasperated, Hurst flopped back in her chair, lips tight. “I have to do what I have to do. He’s very daredevil. I’m just not like that.”

*

It was weird, they knew, but somehow, Piedra Chica Road had survived.

Big Rock Canyon was a shambles. Electrical wires were down. Debris and ash was strewn everywhere. And then, there was perfect Piedra Chica Road. And at the end of it, like a scene from a happier time, there were two men doing what neighbors often do: grilling steaks, baking potatoes and swigging beer.

Joe Gareri and Gehard Ihde had battled the fire all night, they said. Whenever the authorities tried to make them leave, said Gareri, a computer video graphics expert with fold-up cellular phone tucked in his pocket, they retreated to their houses, refusing to answer the door.

“They put so much pressure on us to leave, we finally went into hiding,” said Ihde, a service director for Lexus VW in Santa Monica. “People always say if you stay with the house, you can save it.”

And save it, they did--though they admitted luck must have had a lot to do with it. Now, they were exhausted, relieved, a little dazed. But the beer tasted good. It felt great to sit down.