Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Green and Red Tags Spell Out a Harsh Future in Fillmore : Ventura County: Recently refurbished downtown area of historic rural community suffers damage estimated at $200 million. Fifty are injured.

Building inspectors stepped over heaps of rubble and glass shards Tuesday to canvass the city’s showcase old business district, trying to determine the structural safety of the turn-of-the-century shops.

As shopkeepers waited nervously behind yellow police tape, inspectors concluded each tour of the red brick and masonry buildings by attaching a colored tag: green if the structure was safe, red if there was significant structural damage.

Jesse Segovia’s Fillmore Market had one of the red tags.

“We all have to make a living out of here,” said a stunned Segovia, who heads the family-owned market. “This store has been around for 100 years and hopefully it will be around for another 100 years.”

Ventura County suffered widespread damage in Monday’s quake--more than 800 people injured, with a property toll over $400 million--and no community was shaken more violently than rural Fillmore, which sits astride the Oak Ridge Fault.

City leaders had recently poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to refurbish the old downtown district of this small city in Ventura County’s citrus belt. But the city suffered an estimated $200 million in damage in the quake, with more than 50 injuries.

“We like to call Fillmore the last, best small town in Southern California,” City Manager Roy Payne said. “We had a very optimistic view of what we would accomplish this year. . . . Now we’re back to Square 1.”

In other parts of a 40-square-block area crippled by the quake, hundreds of newly homeless residents waited for word on whether they would be allowed to return to their homes.

A 40-unit apartment complex and a two-story residential hotel that was home to more than 100 field workers were closed indefinitely by building inspectors.

The walls of the 65-year-old Fillmore Hotel crumbled and collapsed Monday, crushing a row of cars along Fillmore Street and leaving the one- and two-bedroom apartments exposed.

Pedro Barajas, 53, and his eight children lived in an apartment at the hotel. When the quake hit, they escaped--partially dressed--with only their lives. Sheriff’s deputies will not allow them to return to the building.

“We didn’t get anything--not even shoes,” Barajas said, surrounded by his children at a Red Cross shelter.

Throughout Fillmore, families spent the night outside, sleeping in tents or simply laying mattresses in their front lawns. Many homes throughout the city were left listing or knocked off their foundations.

“We’re still nervous,” said Leticia Quezada, 22, who spent the night on her mother’s front lawn with her brother, sister and mother. The family had set up a barbecue grill and a table where they ate lunch and dinner Tuesday.

“We probably will stay out here tonight as well,” Quezada said.

Down the block, the Wertz family had set up two pup tents and living room chairs on the front lawn.

“It’s just a mess in there, everything is on the floor and, besides, the youngest one is terrified,” said Mary Jo Wertz, cradling her 6-year-old, Jeanie.

On California 126, on the eastern edge of Fillmore, highway construction crews Tuesday began patching a giant crater left when a natural gas line exploded. The blast ripped a 10-foot-wide crater in the highway, shooting a ball of fire into the sky.

The explosion lit a fire at a nearby mobile home park. One mobile home burned to the ground. Two adjacent trailers were badly damaged by fire and several others were shaken from their foundations during the quake.

Many of the mobile home residents spent the night at the emergency shelters.

The building inspections Tuesday focused on Fillmore’s showcase business district, where the quake damaged about 60 historic buildings along the main thoroughfare and sent bricks crashing to the ground.

Many of the downtown buildings are made of unreinforced masonry. “It’s like most places,” said Donald Jephcott, an Orange County structural engineer brought in to help determine whether downtown buildings were safe to re-enter. “These old buildings all come apart (when) they are shaken.”