What Was Quick to Crack Is Slow to Mend as Calls Deluge Repairmen

Contractors, masons and glass shops in areas hit hardest by Thursday’s earthquake are whittling away at a barrage of requests for inspections and repair of brick walls, chimneys and windows, but they say homeowners who want immediate service may have to look elsewhere.

Repair shop owners in Whittier and other cities where the damage was most severe say they have been swamped with calls from distraught homeowners and cannot meet all immediate requests for help.

People unable to wait several days, or in some cases, weeks, for repairmen in some parts of the San Gabriel Valley can find available contractors and glass shops in Los Angeles and lesser-hit cities nearby, they said.

Almost 200 licensed masonry contractors, thousands of bricklayers and hundreds of glass workers operate out of the northeastern Los Angeles County area.

“It’s a matter of demand. They can’t do all the jobs at once,” said James Amrhein, executive director of the Masonry Institute of America, a trade association in Los Angeles. “The problem is everybody wants it now.”

Most large buildings in need of repair already have been inspected, said Paul Sheedy, administrator of Building and Development Services in Pasadena. Many office structures and corporate buildings plan in advance for immediate inspections and repair crews in case of an earthquake.

“The average homeowner is not geared for emergencies like this, and isn’t ready to take on the repairs,” Amrhein said.

Anthony Villasenor, owner of Reliance Masonry in Whittier, said the demand by homeowners for masonry work has been “too much to handle” for his crew of 15 workers. The contractor, who usually gets “one call in 50 for chimney repair,” got 20 “urgent” requests Friday morning; he scheduled 10 before referring the rest to competitors. On Saturday morning, he received six calls within an hour.

Milton Anderegee, owner of M and L Masonry in Whittier, by noon on Friday had received more than 50 requests for fireplace repairs. Normally he averages 15 to 20 a day.

While inspections of damage to walls, windows and chimneys usually can be performed within an hour, actual repair jobs on chimneys and brick walls can take up to three days to complete, Villasenor said. Crews must make estimates, order materials, clear wreckage, set up equipment, such as scaffolding, and then actually rebuild the damaged structure.

In addition, contractors often must wait for city building inspectors to analyze damages and determine if the structure meets present code specifications. In most hard-hit cities, the inspectors themselves have their hands full. Eight Whittier inspectors were joined by 20 more from the city and county of Los Angeles and the City of Rancho Cucamonga to answer the bombardment of inspection requests.

The damages, however, may not wait.

“Repairs have to be done right away. They’re too dangerous just to be waiting. Another small jolt, and half of the fireplaces left standing could come down completely,” said Villasenor, who noted many callers had crumbling chimneys threatening neighboring houses and cars.

Replacing windows, which can take from an hour at a residential house to a day at large businesses, is faster than brick work, but Dan Gulbranson, owner of City Mirror and Glass in San Gabriel, still is booked for the next month.

Gulbranson said he’s been receiving 200 to 300 calls a day since the earthquake, and all five of his glass fitters will work weekends to try to meet the heavy demand for window repair. His crew is averaging 20 to 30 jobs a day by working a 15-hour shift.

“Most retail glass shops around here are going to be quite busy for awhile,” Gulbranson said. “We’re booked up until November, if not longer.”

Hardware and building supply stores, meanwhile, are having little difficulty meeting the great demand for bricks, glass, wood and plumbing materials. Some store owners anticipate as much as a 15% increase in business when the rebuilding process gets fully under way.

“We’re very busy with plywood and plumbing supplies,” said Whittier Lumber manager Tom Crossman. “(But) we have no fear of running out.”

In particular, Crossman said, homeowners were purchasing flex lines to reattach their water heaters. Flashlights and batteries were also selling quickly, he added.

On Friday, Crossman’s customers were actually able to enter his store. In the hours after the quake, he explained, most employees were busy picking up merchandise that lay strewn in the aisles and cleaning up paint that had spilled when cans tumbled to the ground.

“We stayed open (Thursday) but we helped people from the front door,” said Crossman. “It looked like World War III in here.”

Employees of Montebello Glass and Mirror Co., which lost its entire stock of window repair glass during the quake, drove to Long Beach to get new panes from a distributor. After patching customers’ windows with plywood on Thursday, the firm was able to make a handful of repairs with glass on Friday, owner Julie Bustamante said.

At ACI Glass, a major Santa Fe Springs-based manufacturer and distributor of safety glass, truckloads of raw glass were arriving Friday from Texas and Northern California, said general manager Ted Zaharis. The firm lost its own supply of more than 100,000 pounds of raw glass--from which it makes safety glass for windows, patios doors and bathrooms--worth $250,000 during the earthquake.

“It was very, very scary to see glass fly all over the place,” Zaharis said. “We’ve never had anything like this.”

To fill the immediate needs of retail shops, Zaharis said, the Santa Fe Springs outlet was trucking in safety glass made at several other Los Angeles-area ACI plants.

“We feel we have enough glass coming in from our other branches to take care of most of the needs,” he said, noting his shop’s main problem was finding the time to respond to the barrage of requests for service.