Social Tremors Still Shaking S.F.’s South of Market Area : Earthquake: The city’s second-most-affected district has been all but forgotten in the disaster’s aftermath.

Market Street divides a corner of San Francisco into different worlds. One is the prosperous financial district, largely untouched by the earthquake; the other is South of Market.

An intriguing mix of old and new, shabby and chic, South of Market is little known by outsiders. And in the days since the Oct. 17 disaster, it has been all but forgotten even here although it was one of the areas hardest hit.

South of Market, where warehouses, residential hotels and wholesalers in recent years have been joined by fashionable restaurants, offices and artists’ studios, was the second-deadliest place during the quake.

Five people died under a torrent of bricks when the 15-second upheaval wrenched off the top of a four-story building and sent it tumbling onto a narrow street. Only the Nimitz Freeway collapse in Oakland, with 41 known deaths, claimed more lives.

As for damage, “South of Market is the second-most-affected area of San Francisco,” said Michelle Pla, spokeswoman for the city’s Bureau of Building Inspection. Pla said dozens of buildings were “red-tagged” as unsafe.

The most affected city district was the Marina, an affluent neighborhood where entire apartment buildings crumpled and burned.

“Everyone feels sorry for the people in the Marina,” said Eric Pryor, whose South of Market residential hotel was red-tagged. “But the people here are also victims of what I call the social disaster in the city--the real victims.”

For some of the most unfortunate of the neighborhood’s displaced, the quake also took their jobs. Goodwill Industries was forced to lay off about 150 people after incurring $2 million in property damage and $3 million in equipment damage at its 83-year-old headquarters.

“We’ve laid off the disabled, the disadvantaged--the working poor, South of Market people that we serve with our rehabilitation, job training and placement,” said Goodwill spokeswoman Charleen Harty.

“A lot of them live in the area. . . . They now stand to lose jobs and homes in one shot. Some of them aren’t English-speaking or have hearing or vision loss. They cannot go through the normal channels to get help,” she said.

City and relief officials had no count of South of Market residents made at least temporarily homeless. For many, a traumatic time has been made worse by being moved to different shelters.

“There’s a certain amount of confusion to being in one place for only a couple of days, then have to go (to) the next place and the next. It makes things even more difficult,” said Michael Robb, a registered nurse working in the mental health center of a Red Cross shelter.

The shelter, one of several in the city, started out at the Convention Center. Then single men were moved to a Navy helicopter carrier, then to a large building a few blocks from City Hall. Women and families were moved to the Presidio, an Army base.

Although its residents differ from those of the Marina, South of Market is like that neighborhood in that areas most devastated are built on fill--rubble, mud and sand extending the original shoreline into San Francisco Bay.

South of Market was hard hit also because many of its buildings are decades old, often unreinforced. One historic warehouse facing possible demolition dates to 1867.

In some places, narrow buildings lean slightly and the top lines of broader structures appear to wave, following the buckling of the street and soft earth below. Others show little or no damage from the outside but are blocked off by yellow plastic tape and a warning on the front door.

“A lot of these buildings look OK, but go inside and step on some of the floors, and I’d be surprised if you don’t fall through,” Pryor said.

South of Market’s wholesale sellers of every product from flowers to expensive furniture, its discount clothing outlets and its restaurants and bars were mostly spared serious damage.

Still, there is a decline in traffic, affecting “mostly the service industries that depend on walk-in business--retail, restaurant, car repairs,” said Patrice McCarthy, spokeswoman for the South of Market Business Assn.