About 475 miles from home, Novato Fire Department engineer Steven Rucker died while protecting property on Orchard Lane, just northwest of Julian, where a friend of ours lives, or lived. We don’t know yet if her home was spared, although it’s not likely. But she is fine, sort of. Another friend lost his home in Scripps Ranch and another lost hers east of El Cajon. From Poway to Alpine, friends were evacuated, many more than we realized initially, and the stories keep coming as connections are re-established.

With all schools, most governments and businesses shut down on the Monday and Tuesday of San Diego’s firestorm, with ground-hugging smoke obscuring the sun and burning the lungs and sickening ash encrusting the city, the depression was tangible enough to try to shake by Thursday. That’s when fresh, cooling air — and for some a cleansing rain — blew in from the northwest. While firefighters and residents of the back country continued to struggle, while the thousands who were burned out continued to sift through putrid wet ash, for most San Diegans the recovery began on Thursday.

For many San Diegans, getting back on track is a matter of focusing, consciously avoiding the distractions that seemed all-consuming in the final days of October.

That’s not to say that civic leaders should refrain from a thorough analysis of the events that prevented air support from arriving earlier to douse the flames. And local, state and federal officials must continue to ask why more than 280 out of a force of 850 San Diego firefighters weren’t staffing the firelines on Sunday, the first full day of fires. That’s the day Fire Chief Jeff Bowman attempted to recall his force from aiding firefighters near San Bernardino and other Southern California hot spots. That’s the day his entire force could have returned within three to six hours, the day when a big blaze might have been stopped from becoming the largest conflagration in California history, more than 250,000 acres and some 1,500 homes. That’s the day when the California Department of Forestry declined to honor Bowman’s “begging,” as he put it. Indeed, the new administration in Sacramento must ask if CDF Director Andrea Tuttle, a distinguished environmentalist but not a firefighting commander, is the right person to lead what is most urgently a specialty military-like fighting force.

When her troops did arrive and San Diego firefighters did return and mutual assistance from throughout California and the West did respond, their performance was heroic. To them, to Engineer Steven Rucker and his family, San Diego’s gratitude is deeply beyond words.

But the postmortem of civic leaders should no longer distract average readers from their duties to get back to work and shake off their blues. The average reader is the owner or senior manager of a small or medium-size business, entrepreneurs who must rally themselves and their own troops of employees, associates, clients and vendors. After all the hugging and the gossip, getting back to work sooner rather than later will restore momentum so that the final days of October become an interruption rather than an economic disaster. If you need a gentle pick-me-up, re-read Ken Blanchard’s post-Sept. 11 “Gesture of Comfort” at sandiegometro.com/2001/oct/lastword.html

Shutting down San Diego’s economy for two days cost perhaps $700 million in spending or operating revenue, an amount so easily spent or restored in subsequent days and weeks that its effects will be forgotten in a year when another $130 billion of economic activity will have been produced. The $1 billion or so in property damage will be covered by insurance, new money entering the economy. Lost lives never will be replaced, and broken lives may be very difficult to fix. But for most San Diegans, the time is now to be thankful and get back to work. If the business plan for 2004 isn’t written, write it.