Futureshock : Whittier Quake Forced City to Define Itself

7:42 a.m. Oct. 1, 1987:

City Councilman Myron Claxton was eating breakfast at a Bright Avenue restaurant when the 15 seconds of shaking began. When he ran outside, he could see rising clouds of dust to the north. Falling bricks from uptown buildings raised the dust, he would later learn. To the west, he saw black smoke from a burning house. Ruptured gas lines led to the fire.

As Claxton drove east toward his home, he noticed the clock at City Hall had fallen. Glass from broken street lights glittered up and down Mar Vista Street.

The disaster was plain to see.

Other changes, just as significant, could not have been foreseen by Claxton and other residents that morning.

11 a.m. Oct. 1, 1990: Three years later.

Claxton, a lifelong area resident, watched as Mayor Thomas K. Sawyer presided at a ceremony to mark the third anniversary of the 5.9-magnitude Whittier earthquake. Claxton stood in front of a new building that was a pile of bricks three years ago.

He listened as Sawyer told a crowd of reporters that the city was well on its way to recovery.

“The earthquake was a godsend in a way,” Claxton mused later, “in that it happened when it did, before schools and businesses opened. And no one in Whittier got killed.

“And it got people organized and thinking about the future of Whittier.”

In 15 seconds, the course of the city’s future had been altered forever.

When that quake and its powerful aftershocks rumbled through Whittier, they did more than shake down or disable more than half the buildings downtown and cause an estimated $90 million in damage. The quake crippled a struggling downtown business district. It turned homeowners into house guests and apartment dwellers, forcing them to struggle with repairs and new mortgages.

The temblor rattled local politics, as well, in this city of 77,000.

“There developed a broad-based feeling in the community that something had to be changed quickly because the Whittier that people had known and grown up with was being lost,” said Bob Henderson, who said quake-related problems were what prompted him to run for office.

Candidates such as Henderson and Helen McKenna-Rahder swept into office promising to change the way Whittier’s government handled post-quake development. They said they wanted to slow down the proliferation of apartments, lower the density of new apartments and improve their quality and appearance.

Many homeowners sold out to apartment developers rather than face costly repairs, said Richard Hubinger, city director of building and safety. The developers offered good prices because all they wanted was the land. If not for the quake, he said, some homeowners might not have sold out.

Most of those who did stay have new mortgages to pay for earthquake repairs. Most also have renovated, safer homes. Four rebuilt homes were the subject of a realtor-sponsored home tour this year.

Other homeowners are still consumed with rebuilding. There are houses missing chimneys all over town. The unreinforced brick chimneys were some of the first to fall.

About 4,200 homes were damaged, said O.L. Lewis, the city’s building rehabilitation manager. Substantial repair work has not begun on 13 homes because of delays in government aid. Thirteen other homes are being rebuilt. Most of these families are living with relatives, Lewis said.

With luck, it will not be long before displaced homeowners will no longer need his help, Lewis said. “I look forward to doing nothing for a while. I’m going to retire in December, unless there’s another earthquake,” said Lewis, 63.

The quake also changed the face of commercial Whittier. As buildings went down, some of them dating from the town’s early years, small shopping plazas appeared in greater numbers. Other blocks had empty lots.

“We were beginning to hit a crest,” said Hank Cunningham, assistant city manager for community development. “That’s why the earthquake was so devastating.”