LETTERS FROM HOME: DISASTROUS TRAINING

November 11, 1993

Dear Patty,

Leslie called to tell me about the fires in Laguna Beach. She spoke in a torrent, as if some emotional core had been breached and still was pumping these many days later.

At 10:30 one morning, the fire department told her all was well, that they were even sending firefighters to other locations. An hour later, someone from the Times called to say Laguna was burning down. Get in and cover it.

Police were stopping cars near her house, and she saw terrified people running down the highway trying to get to their children in town.

She called her husband but he wouldn't leave his office, so she decided to stay home and hose down their roof. There were millions of reporters covering the story but she only has one home.

She told me about finally going into downtown Laguna, having to pass through eight police checkpoints. How eerie it was to be in one of the tourist meccas of Southern California with everything closed.

And she still sounded frightened.

People I talked to whose houses were flooded last summer had the same edgy disbelief in their voices.

I spent part of a day filling sandbags in Ste. Genevieve with hundreds of other people. It's one of the prettiest towns I've ever seen, old and French.

One burly man who lived on high ground was there working the day after burying his mother. He didn't say much, just looked hurt and determined all at once.

My group included a happily retired couple who drove in relief supplies from their church in Tulsa and stayed to sandbag. They went home for awhile, then decided they couldn't stay away.

Not everything is equal in disasters, though. Southern California's came and went with the Santa Ana winds. Ours went on and on.

In Laguna, FEMA is putting people up in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. When the flood hit Cape Girardeau, people stayed on cots in an old office building.

Here, most people have been thankful for whatever help the government has given. The fires may have destroyed political careers in Laguna Beach.

The liberals who run the town in the middle of all those Orange County conservatives are in trouble because a few years back they refused to build a reservoir that could have helped save some of the houses that burned.

The building site was environmentally sensitive, but those words are sounding a little silly right now to the 360 families whose houses just went up in smoke.

Then Leslie read me a story from the Times about a ceremony in which Hare Krishna, Native American and Buddhist holy men blessed the Main Beach volleyball courts. We finally laughed, knowing that certain things about Laguna Beach will never change. What a relief.

We laughed during the flood, too. I'm sure we did.

I tell Leslie she covers the most unusual city in America. My city's more conventional. We have volleyball courts, but finding a Buddhist monk to bless them might be a problem.

We did have a post-hippie coffeehouse for a few months, but it appears to have closed. At one point they had about 25 employees, few of whom knew how to make coffee. Good vibes, though.

We have floods instead of fires, tornadoes instead of hurricanes, heat waves, blizzards and riverboat gambling.

Maybe you have to be here.

Love, Sam