Planning ahead, knowing what to take

Baby books. Her daughter’s old music boxes. A toy soldier collection from her son’s childhood.

Darlene Reid didn’t have to think much about what to pack as fire bore down on her Malibu home. It was all there on the handwritten list she kept taped inside a closet door.

“It’s the things you want to pass along to other generations,” she said. “You need these things to tell the story of your family.”

Evacuation has become something of a ritual for the 64-year-old Reid, who has been forced to leave at least five times in the 30 years she has lived there. Three times her house has burned, though never completely.

She grabbed her list again Sunday night and packed up her Volvo station wagon.

A lace table tablecloth sewn by her grandmother, her wedding dress, photo albums, Christmas ornaments -- she piled all of it into the car.

Most of it had only sentimental value, but some things were worth real money. “It’s really unpopular, but I brought my fur coat,” Reid said.

She drove down the hill to Duke’s Malibu Restaurant, where food was set out in the banquet room for several dozen evacuees.

Whether it’s floods, fires or mudslides in Malibu, “Everyone knows Duke’s,” said general manager Josh Morgan. “They all congregate here.”

Joanne Gary, who arrived with her 21-year-old son, Stephen, in a packed sedan, lost her home to fire in 1993. It took every memento of his first seven years.

This time she got out the important stuff -- “every word he has ever written, every paper, every poem,” along with his only first-place surfing trophy and a painting of a wave he made in the seventh grade.

Gary, 58, also grabbed her Uggs. “They are comfort boots, and I needed comfort,” she said.

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Times staff writer Alan Zarembo contributed to this report.