FIRST PERSON / A VICTIM’S STORY : Scoop for Newsman: His House Is History : Laguna fire: Veteran of tragic scenes is out reporting on disaster when it hits home. He is left with a sense of loss far beyond material goods.

“What do you take with you? What do you leave behind? And what will still be there when you return?”

That’s how I began a story about people fleeing their homes in the face of a fire that devastated large parts of Santa Barbara in 1964.

Since then, through nearly 30 years of covering fires, floods and riots, I’ve seen countless people swept up in the maelstrom of disaster, tormented by those same questions.

As the journalist, the impartial observer, I was always able to walk away from such tragedy.

But then last Wednesday, it was my turn.

A brush fire that began just before noon in the outer reaches of Laguna Canyon would spread to the town and leave a path of ruin that included a quaint, 70-year-old cottage in an area known as Canyon Acres. It was my home.

As production editor at The Times Orange County Edition, I don’t go to work until 6 p.m. I was running errands at the time and looking forward to lunch with a friend when word of the fire reached downtown. The fire was still small and far away. But that changed quickly as the wind-driven flames moved toward residential areas north of town.

I called to make sure the office knew. My boss told me to stay in Laguna Beach and start covering the story because it might become difficult, if not impossible, for other Times reporters to reach the community on roads clogged with emergency vehicles.

For nearly eight hours I moved about town, interviewing residents who’d either been spared by the fire or wiped out. About 9:30 p.m., I was double-checking with a fire official about the areas that had been hit: Emerald Bay, Boat Canyon, Allview Terrace, Mystic Hills, Skyline Drive “and Canyon Acres,” he added.

It took a minute for it to sink in. Then fright and fear began to take over.

I was nearly 30 minutes getting into the usually quiet and rural neighborhood, where trees and shells of houses continued to burn quietly after the fury of the fire had moved up the surrounding hillsides. The destruction was worse than I had envisioned. Only a few houses, at the mouth of the small canyon, survived. The rest vanished. I found mine, recognizing through the smoky darkness the only thing still standing--the fireplace.

Thinking about it in the days since that Wednesday, I’ve wondered if being there would have changed anything. Probably not. An investigator working along Canyon Acres Drive in the aftermath told me that in the intense fire, my cottage, which I had bought in June, was gone in less than 10 minutes.

And, if I’d been there, I’d have faced those same questions: what to take, what to leave, what would be left when I returned?

As it turned out, all that survived were the clothes--Levi’s and a casual shirt--I’d been wearing when I left home the morning of the fire. And one car I left at a garage for a license plate renewal smog check.

But my losses are not more, and may be less, than those suffered by the other hundreds of residents whose homes perished in the flames. The furniture, the clothes, the TV and VCR, the computer, the pots, pans and dishes. Those can all be replaced, someday.

Of course, as I inventory my life--and not for insurance purposes--I increasingly become aware that other things are gone. There were mementos, for sure; hundreds of little things collected over the years, with no meaning to anyone but me. And then there were those few items which now, after a few days’ reflection, I’ve come to realize marked significant points in the passage of my life.

* A set of the complete works of western author Zane Grey. Not great literature by most standards, but those small volumes, received singly or in pairs through many Christmases and birthdays, would spawn a voracious appetite for books that continues today and has too often made moving from one home to another a tiring and muscle-torturing ordeal. “Arizona Ames,” “Call of the Canyon,” “Last of the Plainsmen,” “10,000 on the Hoof,” “Riders of the Purple Sage.” Good friends all, and never to be forgotten.

* Among nearly 1,700 record albums spanning the music spectrum, only two really come to mind. Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” and Little Richard’s first album. Both bought brand-new about 1955 as a young boy became that most-dreaded of creatures: a teen-ager. It was a time for the first stirrings of rebellion and it coincided pretty much with the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, that now widely accepted symbol for youthful revolt.

* A rifle, never used for hunting and probably not fired since 1957. During nearly four years, starting when I was about 11, I spent parts of my summer vacations and many weekends during the school year learning the skills of a cowboy on a working cattle ranch in northern Arizona. One night, making the 17-mile ride down from a summer grazing area to the main ranch house, the horse and I apparently became the most desired entree on the menu of a mountain lion that stalked us for two hours. The next morning, when one of the old cowboys (I think he was 21 or 22) heard I’d been unarmed, he gave me the rifle with the admonition never to go out without it.

* A couple of boxes containing trophies and a collection of pictures. A nylon carrying bag still full of fireproof coveralls, shoes and gloves, and a crash helmet. Reminders--along with a diary kept during a championship-winning season--of nearly 10 years driving racing cars, not as a professional but just as a young man seeking an exciting way to spend 10 or 15 weekends a year.

Something that takes getting used to is losing the more mundane possessions everyone accumulates and takes for granted. For instance, I decided Saturday that it would be a good idea to take pictures of what was left of the house in case the totality of its destruction is ever questioned. I was on my way out the door of the photo store with a roll of film before I realized I no longer had a camera.

But those kinds of things will be replaced, some through insurance and a lot of it through the overwhelming generosity of friends, co-workers and even complete strangers. It’s just part of starting life over.

“You just have to go on,” a friend pointed out. “You didn’t realize it then, but you started life over last Wednesday. Everything up until then is BTF.”

“BTF?”

Before The Fire.

More Fire Coverage

* STAYING PUT--Despite the continuing danger, victims of earlier wildfires rebuild burned homes in the same hazardous places. A4

* RESEEDING HILLS--The state will begin seeding 10,000 acres of open space destroyed during the Laguna Beach blaze. A11

* CONFUSED MARKET--Dozens of pending home sales in the fire-ravaged Malibu area were thrown into limbo. D1

* OTHER STORIES, PICTURES: A4-A11, B1, A30