L.A.--at Its Very Best When Nature Is at Its Absolute Worst

Angelenos have had lots of experience--way too much, really--in dealing with disaster these last few years. Floods were followed by riots, which were followed by wildfires, which--some would say inevitably--were followed by a major earthquake.

Maybe that’s why people throughout the region reacted so valiantly, stoically, communally to Monday morning’s devastating temblors. The heroes of the day ranged from emergency personnel who quickly got to where they were needed to countless Southern Californians who went far out of their way--some even risking their lives--to help neighbors. But we would like to think there is another reason: that all of these terrible tests have steeled us to do our best in those moments when nature, or some human force, does its worst.

Once again, Los Angeles is coming through with resiliency. We will need that resiliency in the months ahead as we struggle to rebuild both a badly fractured transportation system and to find homes for the thousands whose residences were destroyed or made uninhabitable by the Northridge earthquake.

FIXING THE FREEWAYS: Even as many commuters stayed home for a second day, it was clear that the greatest challenge will be getting people to and from work--or just around town--until the severe damage to several major freeways is repaired. It was reassuring to see that state highway crews, even before dusk Monday, already were demolishing a collapsed portion of the Santa Monica Freeway, perhaps the nation’s busiest, so it could be cleared away and replaced. But even with such prompt work, it is expected to take many months to get this highway and the Golden State, Antelope Valley and Simi Valley freeways back in operation.

It is also reassuring that Clinton Administration officials and members of Congress are promising immediate federal emergency help. But with a repair price tag of more than $100 million--not to mention the continuing need to retrofit 12,000 freeway bridges all over California to make them earthquake-safe--the necessity of much more federal aid is obvious. Given the importance of California’s freeways to the regional and national economy, this funding must now become a budget priority, in Washington as well as in Sacramento. Thus we applaud President Clinton’s decision to visit Los Angeles today.

THE MASS TRANSIT OPTION: In the short term, however, a challenge for local officials will be to make car-pooling and other forms of group transportation as widely available, and user-friendly, as possible.

The region’s new Metrolink rail service proved its worth Tuesday, bringing commuters in from the Santa Clarita Valley, which had no access to freeways because of quake damage to the highways. If damage to railroad tracks can be repaired, Metrolink trains today will offer an alternative for Simi Valley commuters as well. Local transportation officials must do all they can--cutting red tape, allocating extra money--to get more commuter trains running, perhaps even extending their routes. Why not run Simi Valley trains all the way to Oxnard, for example, to relieve Ventura Freeway traffic?

Trains are not the only alternative, of course. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other bus agencies must get more buses into service all over town, with longer operating hours and sufficient security to make them attractive to people perhaps unaccustomed to leaving their automobiles at home.

Of course, some Angelenos will have to continue using their cars because they have no other option. Car-pooling or working flexible schedules might help them. And traffic engineers in Los Angeles and other cities along the damaged freeways must coordinate to keep streets open and traffic running smoothly--through timed traffic signals, temporary one-way streets and other short-term solutions.

Housing officials, too, will have to be creative, finding ways to quickly retrofit or rebuild damaged apartments and houses. This region already had a problem in providing decent housing for the poor and even for middle-income families such as some of the San Fernando Valley apartment dwellers made homeless by Monday’s quake.

THE COMMUNITY OPTION: That adversity can help bring together total strangers is of course a cliche; and that Los Angeles, with its great distances and spread-out communities, is a metropolis of strangers is another. But sometimes when two cliches collide a new truth is born. And the truth of these past 48 hours is that, notwithstanding some exceptions, Los Angeles once again appears to be taking adversity’s measure by working together as a community of common interests.

That an earthquake would serve to cement this sense of unity--developing out of the 1992 riots, the court trials that followed and rampaging wildfires--is no tribute to earthquakes. They are indeed awful. But the people who survive them can find redeeming value in themselves, in their sense of common purpose and communal ties. That is what’s happening this week.