A Loss Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Tuesday was a day for aftershocks. Dozens shook the basin, keeping everyone off balance. Not all aftershocks, however, rumbled up from the ground. Others were of a more personal nature, generated from within--the shock of learning, absorbing, exactly what had been lost the day before.

“All I want,” a young woman said bitterly as she stood in a courtyard below her damaged apartment, “is my stuff.”

She spoke of her $10,000 china set, her new big-screen TV and other items. All damaged beyond repair. None insured. Of course she had known this before the sun came up Monday, after the first violent shaking. Still, a day later, she could not quite accept it and despite the dangers posed by the rickety building she felt driven to return to her apartment.

“I just want to be able to see some of my stuff again,” she told two of her neighbors. And then, fighting tears, she turned her face away. The neighbors, Joe and Hermine Cohen, seemed to understand the urge. They had just spent a few minutes wandering through their own apartment, taking stock of broken vases and furniture pieces, trying to sort out why they felt so bad. They knew it was about more than vases. They knew it was about more than stuff.

*

These people lived on Lassen Street in Northridge, right on the epicenter. Their block is one of large stucco apartment complexes, most thrown up a decade or so ago as part of a citywide dive into high-density dwellings. What the contractors threw up, the earthquake flung down. The apartments were still standing Tuesday, but most seemed only one good windstorm away from a knockdown.

All along the block, tenants were busy pulling what they could from their apartments. They came with friends and relatives, tiptoed into the wobbly structures and emerged with couches and kitchen sets and futons, with LeRoy Neimans and Little Tyke play cars, bird cages and barbecues. Their stuff. They worked fast. The building inspectors had not visited this block yet, and everyone seemed driven by the fear that once the buildings were condemned their belongings could be trapped behind the yellow police tape for a long, long time. Borrowed pickups and rented U-hauls were parked at crazy angles on lawns and curbs. Ignorant of the circumstances, the scene might have suggested that Cal State Northridge just broke for summer vacation and the students were heading home. Neighbor hugged neighbor and passed along temporary telephone numbers.

“Goodby, Angie,” a young man in a Mighty Ducks jersey told the manager at the Lassen Village apartments. “It’s been fun.’

“I knew the people who lived here,” Angie Mendez said, passing out water and bagels in front of her building. “They were all lovely people. I had one man. His name was Vincent Delallio. Yesterday he went to every apartment and knocked and kicked down doors and made sure everybody got out OK. It’s people like that that make this . . . understandable? Is that the right word?”

At other apartments the ambience was not so keen. Down the street, tenants stood in an angry cluster and railed about rent money and security deposits now owed them. “We got screwed!” one man shouted. Their complaints may or may not be legitimate, but their anger seemed like just one more psychic aftershock. Getting mad felt good. The tough part about an earthquake is that there is no one to blame. In the end, building inspectors and freeway engineers and stingy landlords make unsatisfactory patsies. The real “culprit” is nature, and what’s the use of complaining about that?

*

The tenants on Lassen Street seemed strangely eager Tuesday to show off their damaged apartments. “Want to see inside?” they would ask. It seemed bad manners to turn the offer down, which meant several trips up dubious staircases, down shattered hallways, across twisted thresholds. Inside the apartments all looked alike, a terrible mess. To those who lived in them, however, there were important distinctions.

One man pointed to a demolished fish tank, and told all about the fish he’d kept in it for 15 years. Another lingered over a cracked dinette chair, explaining in detail why the rest of the set was in storage. Marred baseball cards, flattened beds, a glass bird with a broken beak--all were on display.

It seemed what these tour guides wanted more than anything was outside acknowledgment of the dimensions of their loss. What they wanted to show was not just their stuff, but the stuff of their lives. See, they seemed to say. See how in just 10 seconds all of this was broken down, taken apart, scattered. And now, they asked, but again not in so many words, how are we supposed to pick up the pieces? Only a fool would pretend to know.