Fearful Families in Orange County Hear Nothing From Tremor Zone

Maria Montiel and her sister, Margo, talk on the phone nearly every two weeks to catch up on family news, current events and the lastest fashion trends.

Margo Montiel lives in San Jose, Costa Rica, and had planned to visit her sister in Costa Mesa in June. But now, because of the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked Costa Rica and Panama on Monday, Maria Montiel worries.

“I just don’t know what to think now,” Montiel said in a tearful telephone interview. “I feel so totally powerless. I don’t know how she or any of my family is doing, and I am scared.”

Montiel, who moved to New York from Costa Rica at age 14, has one other sister, a brother, a grandmother and many other relatives living in the country’s capital.

Telephone lines were damaged by the quake, making it difficult to contact people in Costa Rica. So Montiel spent Monday night on the telephone comforting her mother in New York.

The quake was centered 70 miles southeast of San Jose and hit about 3:58 p.m. Monday. The first jolt was followed by 20 aftershocks, five of them reportedly very serious.

“I just don’t know how they could have handled it, particularly my grandmother,” Montiel said. “She is 70 years old and just went into the hospital for chest pains last week.”

Flora Maria Worthington of Garden Grove also has relatives in San Jose and is worried about their welfare.

“I have a grandson over in Saudi whom I am already desperately worried about,” Worthington said. “Now with this, I just don’t know how much more I can stand. They all just have to be all right.”

Both Montiel and Worthington contacted the local Red Cross with hope that it could find their families, but the group’s officials said Tuesday that they are still having trouble getting any information on the quake.

“All we have is really the basic information on things like where it hit,” said Judy Iannaccone, Red Cross director of public relations. “We do also know that blankets and other relief aid items are being disbursed by the Red Cross from the Panama office and that money is being requested for the relief aid effort.”

Elsewhere in the county, staff members of UC Irvine’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology are fretting about the safety of Prof. F. Lynn Carpenter, who since January has been conducting field research near San Vito in southeastern Costa Rica, near Panama.

“We haven’t heard from her,” said the department’s administrative assistant, Janice Nassany. “We’re trying to call down there, but haven’t been able to get through to her. . . . We’re all concerned.”

Times Staff Writer Matt Lait contributed to this report