Life on a Fault : Residents Get Edgy When Their World Doesn’t Want to Hold Still

Danny Grimes wakes up every day over a fault zone. He dresses in his Whittier apartment and drives west, along the same zone, to his job in Hollywood. Even there, he is still not out of it.

Any day, any time, an earthquake can occur underfoot. It happened the morning of Oct. 1, 1987, destroying everything in his apartment “except the dirty dishes in the sink.” It happened again Monday, first with a 4.5-magnitude quake and then a 4.3 aftershock.

Grimes did not have to be told that it was the Elysian Park Fault.

“It scared me so bad I was shaking like an alcoholic with the DTs,” he said Tuesday. “My heart can’t take another earthquake. I got a job offer in New York, and I wasn’t considering it very seriously until yesterday morning.”

The longtime Whittier resident is just one of many thousands who live along the broad swath of the Elysian Park Fault, a crack or series of cracks about 10 miles below the earth’s surface, slicing through many of Los Angeles’ most densely populated communities.

The poorly mapped fault zone, more than five miles wide, runs beneath Whittier, Montebello, Commerce, Boyle Heights, downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Elysian Park, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. It roughly follows the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, north of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Until recently, the fault was an overlooked geological blemish. But now seismologists are calling the fault one of the more important in the region, capable of generating a quake of 7.0 magnitude or greater.

It is a notion that sits poorly with Ursula Urias, a Montebello resident since 1958. The quake two years ago knocked glasses from cabinets and sent ripples like ocean waves across her concrete patio.

“I thought it was an explosion. I thought the atom bomb had hit,” she recalled, laughing. “This one (Monday) was not as loud--a small bomb.”

What Comes Next?

Urias worries about what comes next. Like most residents on the fault line, she endures with nervous contentment, perhaps even a little pride, in her home over the fault. Every place, she said, has its drawbacks--tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves. She emigrated from East Germany, where they have The Wall.

“You take a little earthquake any time,” she said philosophically.

Many residents expressed surprised that a fault runs beneath their homes and businesses. According to Caltech seismologists, the fault does not necessarily mean that property directly above will suffer the worst of the damage in a big quake.

The main force of the quake, occurring eight or 10 miles under the surface, may often be directed in a diagonal thrust to the surface and the hills or mountains shaken most severely would be several miles from the quake epicenter.

Even so, some residents of the fault zone took the news with worried looks.

“That’s just great,” said Art Lira, owner of Montebello Copy Center on Whittier Boulevard.

Press Begins to Shift

During Monday’s first jolt, the shop’s 10,000-pound printing press--a piece of equipment normally moved only with a forklift--began shifting on the floor.

“I started screaming,” Lira’s wife Lillian said. “It was terrible. But what can you do? We’ve been here 16 years. All our friends are here.”

Judith Federico, 44, of Beverly Hills moved with her husband from Indiana seven years ago. She doesn’t regret it. Yet.

“Our friends told us we were crazy, but we are not worried,” she said, expressing some concern over the possibility that earthquake insurance rates may climb. “They have to live with floods and tornadoes, we have to live with earthquakes. We will still try to buy a house here.”

Dentist Alan Lewis, whose small office has withstood 47 years of wobbling terrain at the busy intersection of Brooklyn Avenue and Soto Street in Boyle Heights, likens the danger of quakes in Los Angeles to “snow in Chicago.”

Lewis had even had tremors hit while he was drilling away inside a patient’s mouth. But it has never caused a problem--at least to the dentist.

‘Get Back to Work’

“I just smile, look around to make sure the building isn’t falling down around me, and get back to work,” he said.

A few residents said the quakes are no problem at all. Jessie Jacquez, who has lived in Montebello for 28 years, said she didn’t budge when Monday’s hit, even when a neighbor outside screamed.

Jacquez was too engrossed in a video of the movie “Witness.” “It was a good part--I didn’t even get up,” she said, “It was a very good movie.”

Oscar Reta, 68, of Commerce said he and his wife must also be getting accustomed to the jolts. His wife went back to bed after Monday’s first shaker. But still, quakes have haunted his nights.

“I’ve dreamed about big earthquakes--telephone lines going down, cars piling up, people going wild, running,” Reta said. “I used to have them pretty often. I don’t know why.”

School at Epicenter

At the epicenter of Monday’s quake--according to the best estimates that seismologists could determine on Tuesday--was Bandini Elementary School in Commerce.

The school has been hit before. It was so badly damaged during the 1987 quake that its main building was closed for the remainder of the 1987-88 school year, principal Raymond Rivera said.

Students were taught in portable classrooms until the building was reopened this February, he said. They were introduced to regular monthly earthquake drills, which seemed to help them cope on Monday. Nearly every student dropped to the floor and got under a desk. Only a few cried.

In teacher Luz Hernandez’s first-grade class, a few well-drilled students wondered whether the jolt was even real. “At first they were asking me, ‘Was it a practice one?’ ” the instructor recalled with a smile. “They were saying, ‘How did Mr. Rivera make (the classroom) move?’ ”

Like other schools in the Montebello Unified District, Bandini has installed an emergency storage shed. It contains water, hard hats, medical supplies, portable restrooms, flashlights, crowbars and other items.

Rivera hopes he never has to use them.

‘Principal’s Nightmare’

“I think that’s every principal’s nightmare,” he said, “that you’re going to have a biggie and it’s going to happen during school time.”

Fred Hayman, founder of the renowned Giorgio Beverly Hills fashion store 27 years ago, called Monday’s quake “a warning for the people who live along this fault to be prepared. I plan to reinforce and refortify my home.”

Commerce resident Harold Villegas had just parked his car in Montebello on Monday when the whole vehicle began to shake. It shook so violently it struck the car in front of him, setting off the other car’s burglar alarm. He didn’t know what was happening until he saw people running out of a nearby building.

But Villegas considers the inconvenience a small price to pay to live in Los Angeles.

“I haven’t been shaken hard enough to think about relocating,” he said. “L.A.’s the place. It’s great here!”

Staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this story.

THRUST FAULTS A thrust, or dip-slip, fault such as the Elysian Park Fault is deeply buried and those neighborhoods directly over it may not suffer the most destructive effects of an earthquake. The main force of the quake, occurring eight or 10 miles under the surface, may often be directed in a diagonal thrust to the surface, and the hills or mountains shaken most severely would be several miles from the epicenter. The dip-slip fault may lie along a mainly horizontal or shallow-dipping plane. When a quake occurs, the upward thrust of one side of the fault (depicted above) produces elevation gains in “folds,” or mountains, while ground on the other side of the fault sinks.

The Elysian Park Fault has not been completely mapped. Scientists believe it generally follows the hill line west from the Whittier area through downtown, the Hollywood Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains to the coast, but its precise position is unknown in a number of areas.