THE SOUTHLAND FIRESTORM : Insurance Agents Offer Shelter and a Shoulder

LAGUNA BEACH — Following in the wake of a lightning-fast brush fire, State Farm’s disaster team moved along Skyline Drive here Thursday morning, searching block after block of ashes and smoking debris for the house numbers listed on a computer printout.

For team leader Monique McGrath, the process of surveying the wreckage of nine homes covered by State Farm, the largest residential insurer in California, was decidedly grim. “This is unbelievable,” McGrath said as she walked through the upscale neighborhood perched high above the Pacific.

A Tustin resident, McGrath had just returned from a four-month stint helping hurricane victims in Florida. “Hurricanes and earthquakes are nothing like this,” she said.

During coming days, insurance companies will assemble an army of agents and adjusters to guide customers through a maze that, under the best of circumstances, can leave tempers frayed. “We have to hold their hands,” McGrath said. “They’re still in shock; you tell them things, but nothing holds.”

“As soon as possible, we want to get some money in their hands, get them clothing and get them into a hotel,” McGrath said. “It’s going to be a year or so before they can return home.”

The Skyline homes insured by State Farm had sold for between $600,000 and $3 million. Elsewhere in Laguna Beach, 30 more homes insured by State Farm were destroyed, and countless others sustained smoke and water damage.

Working from the hastily prepared computer printout, McGrath chronicled the condition of each insured property, a necessary first step in the claims process. “This is ours,” McGrath told an associate, who documented the damage with a camera.

The picture that emerged showed the destructive fury unleased by the fire that destroyed an estimated 310 homes throughout Orange County.

At 1000 Skyline Drive, McGrath held back tears as she wrote a $5,000 living expenses check for John and Barbara Lane, who lost everything when their home burned.

“Nothing is left,” Barbara said softly as she sat on the steps leading to the smoking remains of the home where her family spent the last 16 years. “I have no pictures; I have nothing.”

Her husband was equally stunned. Ironically, the firefighter spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning protecting homeowners from a stubborn brush fire near Rancho Santa Margarita in southern Orange County. Still wearing his fire gear as he walked up to his ruined home, Lane simply shook his head.

“I sort of figured it was gone,” he said quietly while State Farm began to process his claim. “I could hear status reports coming in on our radio. I knew we’d been evacuated.”

Several hundred yards up the hill at 1306 Skyline, a sparkling white child’s crib stood untouched in front of a completely burned out home insured by State Farm.

The smoking remains at 1544 Skyline--another State Farm property--were obscured by a massive truck that was beaming television signals to Arizona.

State Farm agent Jim Lawler said he understood very well the human losses in the wreckage he saw on Skyline.

Insurance is his business, he said, “but these (clients) are my friends. I’ve been an agent here since 1963, and I know these people. I raised four kids with them through parochial schools and high schools.”

Lawler, who watched the fire spread from his office in downtown Laguna Beach, knew at sunrise Thursday that the picture had become grim.

“Last night, after I checked my own home, I drove the upper roads from Broadway to Emerald Bay, all along the ridge line,” Lawler said. “I got up at 5:45 this morning and drove all through Skyline Drive, to get a good grasp.”

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While gazing at the burned-out remains of his home, John Lane said it was Lawler’s gentle prodding that recently prompted him to buy a more expensive policy that will allow him to replace the home using materials that are up to today’s stricter codes.

“The common homeowner policy provides for rebuilding costs with ‘like kind and quality,’ ” Lawler said. “If you’ve got a (30-year-old home), that means you have to make up the difference.”

While the Lanes were taking the first small step toward the arduous task of rebuilding, other homeowners were still coming to grips with the terrible reality.

“I knew our home was destroyed,” sobbed Zari Shalchi, who surveyed her ruined home on Skyline Drive for the first time since being evacuated Wednesday. “I knew it, but I had to see it. . . . Insurance? I don’t know the company’s name. My husband does, I think.”