Earthquake: Diaster Before Dawn : County’s Been Slow to Retrofit Fire Stations : Safety: Budget woes are blamed for lack of repairs to buildings found to be at ‘high risk’ of collapse in quake.

More than four years after the county learned a third of its fire stations were “very unlikely” to survive a major earthquake, officials acknowledged Monday that most of the problems remain uncorrected.

County officials could only identify one fire station--currently under construction--that has been retrofitted since the October, 1989, study found 15 emergency buildings at a “high risk . . . of structural collapse” in an earthquake.

Orange County Assistant Fire Chief Jim Radley and Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said at a news conference that there may be other corrections that they could not recall. But Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said fire officials told her Monday that the only other repairs were “really Band-Aid kind of stuff.”

Officials blamed the slow repairs on the county’s severe budget problems. But Wieder said she was surprised to learn that more has not been done, and she said she will order the County Fire Department to prepare an update on the issue today.

“It takes disasters like this to point this out,” Wieder said. “It’s OK to say cost is the problem when the sun is out. But when there’s life and property at stake, is there a price you put on it?”

Despite the problems in the system, Vasquez and county fire officials said they remained confident in the county’s emergency response.

“We are as ready as we can be with the resources that are available to us and the technology that is available to us,” Vasquez said.

What would the county do if this happened here? “We would respond with personnel and equipment that have trained to respond to these kinds of incidents,” Vasquez said.

Emmy Day, spokeswoman for the County Fire Department, added: “When people do reports like that, they are looking for as near as perfect a situation you can have. . . . If I thought I couldn’t survive an earthquake because the Fire Department wasn’t prepared, I’d move.”

The 1989 study, released shortly after a deadly earthquake rattled the San Francisco area, caused alarm among county officials who promised to resolve the problems as soon as possible.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley called the situation “very serious.” Wieder ordered a special meeting of county emergency planners to talk about solutions. County Fire Chief Larry J. Holms predicted some of the repairs could be made right away, but others would take up to three years.

The report, conducted for the county by EQE Engineering in Costa Mesa, said 15 of the county’s 42 fire stations would be damaged so badly in an earthquake that they would be “very unlikely” to perform their emergency functions. It said another 20 stations were at risk of “substantial damage” that would hamper rescue efforts.

The report did not say how big the earthquake would have to be to cause such damage.

Today, the county has 48 fire stations in its system. But only one--in Laguna Hills near Leisure World--is under construction to correct earthquake problems, officials said. Day said that station is the busiest in the county and considered to have the most critical problems.

Day said three of the stations in the high-risk category were staffed only by volunteers at times of emergency. She also said several of the buildings are owned by cities, even though they are staffed and equipped by county fire crews.

In addition to the structural problems, the 1989 report found significant deficiencies with the county’s emergency radio system, its automatic garage doors, hazardous compressed gas tanks and other equipment. It described the county’s overall fire system as “typically at high risk” to fail in the event of an earthquake.

Some of the problems have been addressed since the report. The corrections described by Wieder relate mostly to desks and equipment that was not properly secured to walls or the floor.

Most notably, the county is also in the process of ordering a new radio system for its public safety departments. The $80-million communications contract, one of the biggest purchases in county history, is intended to upgrade a radio system that one county official recently described as being “like a freeway that has slowed to 5 m.p.h.”

After the report four years ago, county officials also launched one of the first programs in the country to train emergency room physicians to treat earthquake victims in the field. The doctors received the training long ago, but the county has been unable to acquire the medical kits it intended to supply them.

Vasquez said the county had been trying to get pharmaceutical companies to donate the medical kits.

But Wieder said that while the county has major budget problems, she would be concerned if public safety were jeopardized because there was not enough money. She said she was especially bothered because the supervisors have not been told about the status of the county’s earthquake preparedness.

“I feel I’m in an untenable position,” she said. “We should know. The buck should stop with us. . . . If money is the problem, and we’re given all of the data, at least have the information--which it appears we are lacking.”

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.