Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Hundreds in Simi Valley Wait for Inspectors

Their big stucco houses and modest mobile homes knocked crooked by Monday’s massive earthquake, hundreds of Simi Valley residents were still sleeping in tents, shelters or relatives’ homes on Wednesday while waiting for the building inspectors.

As rippling aftershocks Wednesday afternoon shoved some structures even farther off their foundations, a platoon of city and volunteer inspectors fanned out across Simi Valley to see which buildings were safe to use.

Yet despite the dangers some homes posed to residents Wednesday, building inspectors first checked hospitals, schools and government buildings to make sure they were safe, then business districts and housing tracts.

Ensuring the safety of government buildings first was critical “so that we can then provide those services that are needed in the community as quickly as possible,” Deputy City Manager Laura Herron said.

Gaddis Farmer, a city building official, said Simi Valley would do everything it could to avoid condemning residences.

In Thousand Oaks, officials had already slapped “Unsafe to Enter” signs on four residences on the east side.

Barry Branagan, city building and safety director, said the houses had slid off their foundations along Erbes Road, but that all could be repaired.

Officials also posted warnings on houses with fractured chimneys where, Branagan said, “If you’re standing out in the yard, you could get crunched.”

In Simi Valley’s hard-hit east end, most of the 13 families on Golf Meadows Court had moved their furniture onto lawns and themselves into tents where they still lived Wednesday.

Afraid to sleep in houses that were left waterless, powerless and leaning at two-degree angles, they ventured inside only to telephone other landlords in search of new places to live.

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“Devastating,” said Gary Kaye, a 39-year-old Hughes Aircraft engineer surveying the inch-wide cracks that ran the height of his cathedral ceiling living room. “We came within inches of our lives, I believe.”

When the quake hit at 4:31 a.m., most of his neighbors were shaken from their beds, some trapped briefly by fallen furniture or jammed doors.

Kaye’s neighbors, Paul and Haruko Norihiro, found nearly every wall in their house fractured, the entire frame shaken cockeyed by the tremors.

“It was a frightening experience,” said Paul Norihiro, a Japanese-American who had his leg amputated in 1950 after catching tuberculosis in the Nisei concentration camp at Manzanar. “I had a hard time, my armoire fell down and I couldn’t get through.”

Without insurance, he is trying to move what is left of his belongings out by the weekend and hoping for a federal emergency loan to repair the house.

Neighbors Jim and Lynne Rock had already shifted their furniture out of the first floor and into a U-Haul for storage until they find a house to rent.

Their entire house sways and rocks on its twisted frame when they walk upstairs, so they are afraid to move anything out of the second floor.

Now they live in the neighborhood’s tent village, reading at night by floor lamps plugged into the generator in neighbor Jim Rice’s plumbing truck.

The quake ripped gas lines open all along the block, but Rice and friends were able to cap or switch off the lines within 15 minutes, he said.

If he had not, Rice said, “There would have been explosions.”

Mayor Gregory Stratton said the block was one of the worst-hit in Simi Valley.

But equally hard-hit were trailer parks at the east and west ends of Simi Valley, where the quake and aftershocks rocked most homes off their moorings and severed their water supplies.

Only 14 of the 100 mobile homes at the Trade Winds Mobile Home Park were left inhabitable. By Wednesday, most of their elderly owners had gone to stay with relatives.

“We have not even had anyone looking in, no city officials,” Lee Foster said. “No one’s been in to check on us.”

Police have patrolled the neighborhood regularly since the quake, Foster said, but by 1 p.m. Wednesday no building inspectors had arrived to see the homes that had slumped off their jacks.

Residents of the 221-unit Friendly Village mobile home park on Tierra Rejada Road met Wednesday to find out whether they would be able to recover their homes.

“It looks like they dropped a bomb on us,” said 90-year-old Val Smith, a resident of the park since 1974 as he sat in front of his damaged home, surrounded by trailers resting precariously on their foundations with windows blown out and walls collapsed. “In all my years, and there are a lot of them, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

About 50 of the park’s 300 residents have been staying at a nearby Red Cross shelter, according to Herschel Gray, manager of the park. Of the park’s 221 homes, 189 are no longer livable.

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“It’s been pretty tough on these people,” Gray said. “Most of them are elderly, and a lot of them are going to have trouble paying for their repairs.”

Gray said residents have been unable to get answers so far about federal relief aid.

“I’m sure there’s a list a mile long of people who need help, so we’re going to be patient,” Kennedy said. “This too shall pass.”

On Glenhurst Court, homeowners have been meeting at the center of the block in a motor home for coffee and water.

“It’s really incredible the kind of cooperation we’ve had here,” said motor home owner Cindy Goldberg, who made 10 pots of coffee for the block just after the earthquake hit. “A lot of these people are strangers to us and yet we’ve come together, sharing food and water, tents, everything.”

Because most are reluctant to enter their homes, Cecil Boyuls has opened his to the neighborhood.

Nearly everyone from the dozen residences on the block have been using Boyuls’ shower, because his home sustained little damage.

“It’s been pretty unusual, having people coming in and out of here,” Boyuls said. “But this has been really hard on our neighborhood. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s a lot of damage here.”

In Tim Scalise’s residence, large cracks separate nearly every wall. He says he doesn’t know if he should even be inside because no one has come out to inspect the damage.

“We’ve called every number and we’ve gotten nowhere,” Scalise said. “We’re continuing to camp out in our yard, but at some point we need to know, is this safe or isn’t it?”

Times correspondents Maia Davis and Matthew Mosk contributed to this story.