Smoke, Flames Are Reminders of Riot’s Blazes : Aid: South-Central residents empathize with burned-out suburban dwellers, remembering last year’s conflagration. They offer sympathy and help to the fires’ victims.

The resemblance was unmistakable. The acrid smell of smoke in the air “brings back memories,” one 77th Street Division police officer said with a rueful smile. When Los Angeles last burned, it was the urban core. This time, it was the outer, exclusive fringe. But the similarity in the look and feel of the day wasn’t lost on residents of South-Central Los Angeles.

“Seeing the flames on TV last night, I remember how it was on Slauson. There were flames everywhere, all the fast-food places were exploding, and if it wasn’t that, you were dodging bullets,” Reava Jefferson, an art gallery staffer, said Thursday as she sat at a bus stop on La Brea Avenue and offered sympathy for the new fire victims. “I can just imagine how they feel.”

Unscathed city dwellers took no comfort in having escaped the prophesied fire next time.

But there was a sense that the fire in Laguna Beach is not quite the same as fire in South-Central. “We did feel a little bit better that it wasn’t our neighborhood,” said Jefferson, “but you feel bad for others. It’s almost like they are homeless--they’re just an upper-class kind of homeless.”

Despite the wealth of the afflicted neighborhoods, they still need help--and many South-Central L.A. residents are ready to extend it.

At First African Methodist Episcopal Church Thursday morning, phones were ringing off the hook with people wanting to know what they could do to help those burned out in the ‘burbs. The outpouring was a bit poignant, coming as the church staged a groundbreaking for a new affordable-housing development in the Mid-City area. “There was kind of a down side to the ceremony,” the Rev. Jeanne Beharry said. “We don’t want to celebrate when others are suffering.”

The reality was brought home even more when it turned out that Bill Witte, who was instrumental in getting the project financed, has a house in Laguna Beach that was briefly threatened but survived. “He worked to help us start affordable housing,” said Beharry.

So First AME wanted to do something. “We don’t want to say we’re sorry,” said Beharry. “We want to do something tangible.”

A plan was born when state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) called the Rev. Cecil Murray Wednesday night and suggested First AME become a collection site for clothing, bedding, dry or canned food, and cash donations.

“We’re starting a movement called FIRE,” she said. “First Inner-City Relief Effort. We’re getting a T-shirt done right now to put on the volunteers. We’re trying to say thank you and pay back some of the people who helped us last year after the uprising.” Watson said her office last year ran a riot relief effort that attracted busloads of helpers from Simi Valley to San Diego. Watson has no idea if the people who need a hand now are the same ones who helped at the time of the riots. “We don’t know them by name,” she said, “but we know them by pain.”

Everywhere, those spared offered a kind of fatalism about the biblical intensity of fire. “Wherever you go, there is going to be a fire,” said Renee Camara, co-owner of Bak-Tu-Jua, an African-themed clothing and art shop. “Anything can happen.”

Still, the fire that rolled across thousands of acres of choice Southern California real estate was a reminder that some catastrophes can destroy even the most bucolic enclave.

Some people yesterday were completely content dwelling in an urban hot spot.

“I don’t think I’d want to live up in those hills with all that brush and stuff,” said Renee Camara’s husband, Shaka, as he stood in their shop. Outside, the Leimert Park street was quiet and swept clean. “It’s funny, you hear the high-crime statistics, but when you live around here, you know most of the people and it’s pretty safe.”

The flats of Los Angeles may have been untouched by the recent fires, but many residents still sounded like weary urban warriors. “Where’s a safe place to live, lady?” asked one retired man. “Everywhere you go, you’re going to find some trouble.”

A man walking his white Labrador stopped in the noon heat to muse over his fate to be living on a dusty, dirty street in the flats of Hollywood rather than on a lush--albeit fiery--hillside. “Yeah, sure, I’m glad I live here,” said Randy Lindquist. “I suppose they lucked out during the riots.”

If people didn’t want to compare fates, they did seem intrigued over who started it.

“I personally just concerned myself with who set it,” said an Inglewood telephone installer and repairman, Mr. Harvey. (He produced his checkbook to show that ‘Mr.’ is his first name.) “You’ve got all kinds of idiots out there.”

Southland Fire Toll

The wildfires that raged across the Southland this week are exacting a high toll. As of 9 p.m. Thursday, authorities reported the following figures:

* FIRES: 14 total. One in the San Gabriel foothills above Altadena was 20% contained as of 9 p.m. Four others also were partly contained, including one that has swept from Thousand Oaks to Malibu, which was 25% contained. Seven others are fully contained or nearing containment, including one in Laguna Beach that was fully contained by evening.

* ACRES BURNED: More than 137,000.

* DAMAGE: At least 554 homes damaged or destroyed.

* INJURIES: 67 firefighters, including two seriously burned, and 17 residents.

* EVACUATIONS: More than 26,500, mostly from Laguna Beach.