THE LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE : Latins Begin Fearful Return to Their Homes

Several thousand Latin American immigrants began returning to their homes here Friday night, many of them to decades-old tenements built of unreinforced masonry that have yet to conform to a 1981 law that requires them to be strengthened for earthquake safety.

“The scare is over, but the fear remains,” said Rosa Reyes, 28, who returned to her tiny apartment in a dilapidated old downtown hotel late Friday after spending Thursday night with her husband, 6-year-old daughter and month-old baby across the street in a parking lot.

Reyes was one of thousands of poor Los Angeles residents who remained in limbo, their old brick buildings declared neither safe nor unsafe, their spirits dependent upon the conflicting statements of authorities and the news media. Many had survived earthquakes in their homelands, where aftershocks had killed thousands of people.

A Calming Statement

The Los Angeles Police Department, trying to counter some news media reports that caused thousands of immigrants to set up housekeeping in city parks and parking strips Thursday night, issued a calming statement that was broadcast over Spanish-language radio.

Still, some families, afraid of returning to damaged apartments and unwilling to mingle with strangers at Red Cross emergency centers, said they would stay outside in their makeshift camps.

About a dozen tents were jury-rigged on a lawn outside a city office at Columbia Avenue and Loma Drive. One bore a sign saying, “No trespassing.”

“I like it out here, it’s not scary,” said Patricia Mireles, 12, eating an ice cream bar in a tent made of blankets and sheets.

“Even my husband and my daughter slept outside in cars . . . and I don’t blame them,” said Fay Burciaga, manager of a building at 433 S. Union St. She said she was unable to find the owner to learn what to do.

The Red Cross, unable to persuade the residents to leave their neighborhood, sent a service truck to feed the campers. The city provided them with portable toilets.

Police reported that most people obeyed the broadcast statement encouraging them to return to their houses if they had not been declared unsafe by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.

Check Buildings

Officials said city inspectors plan to check all of the 6,000 remaining buildings in Los Angeles that were constructed of unreinforced masonry. However, fewer than 500 such buildings had been inspected by Friday, almost all of them upon request, according to Art Johnson, Building and Safety Department spokesman.

Because the unreinforced-masonry buildings are so vulnerable to earthquakes, a city law was passed in 1981 requiring that they be reinforced. Between then and now, 1,000 others had been brought up to code, Johnson said. The remaining 6,000 are on varying timetables that require them to be reinforced within about three years, he said.

Requesting an Inspection

Spanish-speaking residents interviewed Friday indicated no knowledge that there is an emergency number (485-2220) where one can request an inspection. Instead, they said, they were waiting for a manager or owner to inspect their buildings or for the news media to report the danger of an aftershock is over.

“The radio tells us not to be afraid; that it is safe to return home,” said Laura Mendez, 26, who remained on a sidewalk outside her dilapidated apartment building with her three children Friday afternoon. “But they also say that there could be more tremors.”

Mendez said that when she looks at the yard-long cracks in her apartment walls, she remembers the horror of the roof falling in on her and her family during a devastating earthquake in Guatemala in 1976.

Miguel Rodriguez of the Anglo-American Development Co. said he called a seismic engineer to inspect the Casa Loma apartment building he supervises at 1401 S. Hill St. downtown.

“We have families too, so we’re having our building inspected to make sure no one gets hurt,” he said.

Examined Structure

Seismic engineer Sunil Jayasinghe checked the dilapidated building, built in 1914, on Friday afternoon and said it had survived remarkably well.

But the main reason he gave for its survival was ironic: The rooms are so small, its many interior walls give support to the four-story structure. The rooms, which have communal kitchens and baths, were once tiny hotel singles. Today whole families live in each room.

Times staff writers Ray Sanchez and Hugo Martin contributed to this story.