Santa Cruz Takes Stock of a City Changed Forever

Still reeling from the destruction wrought by this week’s powerful temblor, residents of this seaside city got a bit of a lift Friday when President Bush paid a call and pledged to muster federal forces to help locals rebuild.

But by nightfall, memories of the presidential tour were edged out by worry as residents braced for heavy rains that threatened to compound problems in the trendy university town.

Largely overlooked since the quake flattened its historic downtown and toppled many of its signature, century-old Victorian homes, Santa Cruz took a turn in the national spotlight Friday as Bush toured the crumbled ruins of the city’s commercial district.

“I was really encouraged by the President’s visit,” county Supervisor Gary A. Patton said as Bush wrapped up a brief tour under gathering thunderheads.

While Bush’s stop brightened the mood for some, it could not blunt the painful devastation Tuesday’s wrenching quake inflicted on Santa Cruz, a sleepy seaport that took shape in the Gold Rush days and now is a mecca for tourists and free spirits.

Estimates varied widely, but at least 1,000 residents of Santa Cruz proper--a city of 45,000 located eight miles from the epicenter--were driven from their homes by the quake. Friday, they were bunking at emergency shelters or hotels, with neighbors or in makeshift camps on front lawns and in public parks.

Countywide, estimates of those displaced by the quake were as high as 8,000 people. Nearly 2,000 were said to be without housing in the small, agricultural town of Watsonville, where people who pitched tents on a high school football field kept warm around fires in rusty barrels.

“Our house is in terrible shape, and we have nowhere to leave the children,” said Armando Ortiz, 33, a strawberry picker who has not returned to work and was camping Friday outside his fractured Watsonville home. “They are still very frightened, and I don’t want to leave my family alone.”

County officials calculated damages of $1 billion to the region’s private and public property. In Watsonville, City Manager John Radin said 30 buildings--or about one-half of the mile-long downtown commercial strip--will have to be demolished, an $80-million loss.

Farmers, meanwhile, said millions of dollars worth of winter crops in the community will perish if electricity needed to operate irrigation systems is not fully restored soon.

Tragic stories abounded, but perhaps the most striking was the loss of downtown Santa Cruz. Virtually flattened was the Pacific Garden Mall, an open-air, seven-block stretch of shops and restaurants. With its flower beds and red-tiled walkways, the mall had long been the city’s unofficial meeting and greeting place, where students, transients and button-down executives mingled in an eclectic pastiche.

In a flash Tuesday, the shaking earth snatched all of that away, leaving the strip--which, ironically, was to be honored with a 20th-anniversary celebration next month--a mass of bricks and glass.

As many as eight of the mall’s unreinforced brick buildings--many of which date to the 1880s--were teetering on the brink of collapse. Another six have major structural damage and might also be lost. About 250 businesses--employing 2,000 people--were damaged or destroyed.

“The mall was a place where counterculture was still alive, where street musicians played and everyone felt comfortable,” recalled massage therapist Lois Werbel, 29, of Sherman Oaks, who was vacationing there when the quake hit. “Now it’s all rubble.”

In 1983, city engineers had warned that the downtown was vulnerable to earthquake damage. Not only were the buildings old and not up to modern seismic standards, but they were built atop the soft, sandy flood plain of the San Lorenzo River. Santa Cruz Mayor Mardi Wormhoudt said the government was aware of the danger, but lacked the money to make improvements.

“The mall will never be the same again,” Wormhoudt said, estimating reconstruction costs at $30 million. “It doesn’t mean it can’t be a wonderful place, but it won’t be the place we knew.”

Merchants, numbed by the sight of their merchandise buried beneath heaps of wreckage, were prevented from entering the mall by police who sealed the area. Many business owners circled nervously nearby, uncertain of their damages and fearing still more trouble as dark rain clouds moved in.

“We can’t get in to find out what’s going on or how bad the damage is,” said an edgy Charline Shockley, who has operated a jewelry store on the mall since 1950. “We know the roof of the second story has collapsed on our ceiling. So far it hasn’t gone through. But it could be teetering.”

Shockley said the disaster was particularly painful given its timing--just before the holiday shopping season, the most profitable months of the year.

Similar worries prompted some merchants to suggest that the city help them set up temporary quarters in tents on downtown parking lots. Local leaders may greet the idea enthusiastically, as a hefty chunk of the municipal budget comes from sales tax generated in the bustling mall.

Surrounded by disaster, residents of Santa Cruz expressed predictably mixed reactions to the week’s dizzying, almost surreal events.

“Buildings that are a hundred years old are like old men who have lived to a ripe old age and are in good health,” Carl Abbott, a Taoist priest whose family owns several historic row houses that survived the quake, said as he studied the devastated mall. “If they die at 101, you can’t be sad because they’ve had a good life.”

Others were less philosophical. Five homeless people outside a shelter played guitars Friday and sang the Beatles tune “Yesterday.” The refrain was written about lost love, but it seemed to apply to the shattered landscape in Santa Cruz: “Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Now I need a place to hide away.”

For county officials, much of Friday was spent cataloguing the damage from Tuesday’s quake, which killed five in Santa Cruz County, injured hundreds more and left scores of homes facing a date with a demolition crew.

There was the California 17 problem. The quake caused a portion of the pavement to sink along the four-lane mountain highway, which links Santa Cruz with the Santa Clara Valley, and aftershocks Friday prompted Caltrans to double the estimated time for repairs to five weeks. About 44,000 people--or one-fifth of Santa Cruz County’s population--use the winding road to reach jobs in the Santa Clara Valley.

Sewage was another issue. Because of ruptures in two main sewer lines, raw sewage continued to pour into Monterey Bay, and area beaches remained quarantined.

By noon Friday, there was a new threat: Forecasters were predicting rain. A downpour threatened to heap new misery on those sleeping under the stars, but a greater worry was the potential for additional landslides in the mountains north of Santa Cruz. Sixty homes have already been destroyed in Boulder Creek, a town of 6,800. And many remember a 1982 flood that killed 22 and caused $106 million damage.

Nonetheless, about 100 residents in the mountain towns were ignoring evacuation warnings Friday. “It’s a dangerous area, but all my stuff is here. My dogs are here. I figured you go down with the ship,” said Todd Viele, 27, of Boulder Creek.

At Beach Flats, a community of clapboard houses near the amusement park, several families displaced by the earthquake waited Friday for the National Guard. The guardsmen were expected to set up tents, but by nightfall, they hadn’t shown.

Quitine and Irma Valadez and their five children, 6 to 17, were among those waiting. The family has been sleeping in a van loaned to them by friends. Their home was knocked off its foundation, damaged so severely that inspectors would not allow them inside.

Quitine Valdez, a cannery worker, said he is unsure what the future holds for his family. He has no money to help dig his way out of the hole the earthquake put them in.

However, amid all the destruction, one thing was still standing: The Giant Dipper roller coaster, which has thrilled millions since its construction 65 years ago. It survived without a scratch.