Aftershock Jars Nerves but It Damages Little

A 4.7-magnitude aftershock sent jittery residents of foothill communities in San Bernardino and eastern Los Angeles counties ducking under desks and rushing for doorways Friday morning, but authorities said it caused little new damage.

The sharp jolt at 9:26 a.m. triggered rockslides along mountain roads and stretched some cracks in walls and ceilings, but most of the damage appeared to be to already frayed nerves.

“About four or five of us tried to get into the same doorway,” said Michael Boddy, an official at the Claremont School of Theology, where staff members were just beginning to recover from the 5.5-magnitude temblor on Wednesday. “It’s been a little hard to get our steam up.”

The aftershock caused a leak in a natural gas line at the University of La Verne, said Jeff Allred, La Verne’s assistant city manager. Several water lines elsewhere in the city, a few miles from the epicenter, were also reported broken.

In the most severely affected communities Friday, residents were still sweeping up glass and rubble and assessing losses from Wednesday’s quake.

A spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Services said the agency was preliminarily estimating damages at $12.3 million. As of late Friday, 38 people had been reported injured, including four pregnant women who went into early labor, and 243 homes and 92 businesses had been reported damaged.

At the theology school library Friday, a distraught John C. Trever got his first glimpse since Wednesday of his collection of ancient Middle Eastern pottery and artifacts, some of the pieces more than 3,000 years old.

“It’s worse than I thought,” said Trever, a retired archeologist who was the first American allowed to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2,000-year-old manuscripts unearthed more than 40 years ago in what was then Palestine.

Shards of pottery were strewn along the floors of display cases. “It breaks my heart to see the collection in this condition,” Trever said. He leaned close to a display case and smiled with relief. “I’m glad that wasn’t broken,” he said, pointing to a small flask. “It’s a little dipper flask that was used in the time of Solomon.”

Also preserved was Trever’s photographed copy of the Scroll of Isaiah, displayed in frames along one wall.

Municipal building inspectors and structural engineers continued making their rounds Friday. In Claremont, 150 houses were reported damaged, but few so severely that closure was required, inspectors said.

On the theology school campus, the Kresge Chapel, a towering structure with 67-foot ceilings, has been sealed until engineers can check cracks between roof and walls. A portion of a building on the campus of the Claremont Graduate School was sealed off because a concrete panel on the second floor had slipped its anchoring.

In the Lang Art Gallery on the campus of Scripps College, about 20% of a collection of modern ceramics was destroyed in the quake Wednesday. But the gallery is planning to open its annual ceramics exposition as scheduled this evening, said Steve Comba, registrar of galleries for the six Claremont Colleges.

In the Honnold Library, which serves the six colleges, staff and volunteers were cleaning up Friday after the first quake knocked about 10% of the books onto the floor. Parts of the third and fourth floors were especially hard hit. Free-standing tiers of bookshelves stood precariously at drunken angles, and the aisles were knee-deep in books.

In one four-square-block area of Pomona, three pre-1940 churches were blocked off. The original sanctuary of the First Baptist Church, on Holt Avenue, was sealed after cracks were detected in the bell tower and on the facade.

“It’s really not as bad as it looks,” said Dennis Endert, church business manager. “A couple of blocks came loose and there’s some damage to the bell tower.”

Down the street, parts of the Pilgrim Congregational Church also were sealed off, including the entrance to the Sunday school over which was perched a stone cross that had swiveled during Wednesday’s quake.

“It used to face north,” structural engineer Michael Krakower said. “Now it’s facing west.”

A block away, on Gibbs Street, members of the congregation of the Trinity United Methodist Church determined the property had sustained $50,000 in damages. On Wednesday, they said, bricks and heavy concrete cornices from the main building had tumbled onto an adjoining nursery, smashing a hole in its roof. No one was in the nursery at the time.