Fire victims shove a lifetime into four suitcases

By JANET EASTMAN
and BETIJANE LEVINE
LOS ANGELES TIMES

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LOS ANGELES -- The decisions are made in a scary, smoky instant. A wildfire is blazing toward the front door: What to take to safety? What to leave behind? One woman in Malibu grabbed her old wedding ring and divorce papers. A Santa Clarita man showed up at an evacuation center with four suitcases but little memory of what he and his wife threw into them. "Probably not what we need," he said, clutching his pillow. An Escondido woman, her head cloudy with panic, rescued her $1,000 Christian Louboutin shoes.

Practical or sentimental, irreplaceable or as inconsequential as a carton of orange juice, the belongings that fire evacuees packed before fleeing speaks to the daunting task of distilling a life into a backpack, a suitcase or the trunk of a car.

In the chaos of disaster, logic doesn't always reign. Los Angeles psychologist Helen Lena Astin said there's no predicting what people see as essential in times of crisis. She remembers a friend doubling back to his house during a 1978 fire to retrieve his tuxedo. He later explained that it was difficult to find a tuxedo that fit him well.

"That's crazy, but it's in- teresting," said Astin, a re- searcher and professor emeritus at UCLA. "Of all the things to worry about. But people make snap decisions, not always about what is practical, but what's valuable to them at the time."

Some people save photographs, but visit any of the neighborhoods threatened by fires this week and one would find evacuees loaded down with high school yearbooks, college dissertations, tax returns, concert tickets, skateboards.

After a night of watching the flames creep closer to her driveway, Alyson Dutch was told Monday morning to leave her home in Malibu's Las Flores Canyon. All she remembered was flinging open her wardrobe closet, stuffing a pair of cowboy boots and a down jacket into a bag, tossing her computer and insurance papers into a box, then corralling her yellow Lab, Sullivan, and her cat, Duck, into her Porsche.

Hours later, at her brother's house in Agoura Hills, she reached into her pocket and was surprised to find a feline-shaped piece of jade that she kept by her nightstand. In the frenzy to pack, she apparently had thought to grab a jewelry box that holds a childhood rosary, charms her mother gave her and a postcard from her late father. "I cherish these things," she said. "If the rest burns, it's all replaceable."

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection recommends people not only devise an evacuation plan, but draw up a list of indispensable belongings to take in the event of a fire: medications, identification, vital documents and valuables. At the Saugus High School evacuation center, some of the Santa Clarita Valley residents forced to leave their homes had thought to take birth certificates and cash machine cards.

Had to return for the cats

Under a glowing sky, Dawn Elder packed her mother's ashes but inadvertently left home without the family's three cats. "We had to run back and get them and bring them to a friend," said Elder, a mother of two who didn't think the shelter would allow pets. (It turns out some do, as long as the animals are in crates, but officials recommend leaving them in the home with food, water and your contact information.)

Ken Zachary and Dallas Blair had stashed food and supplies in case of an earthquake but were unprepared for fire. When sheriff's officials told them to evacuate, they debated what to take. Blair focused on clothes; Zach-ary hunted for paperwork they might need later. "We wound up with four suitcases," he said, "and we still don't know exactly what's in them."