500 Inspectors Decide Who Can Go Home Again

As thousands of residents made uneasy assessments of their own, a small army of more than 500 building inspectors fanned out across Los Angeles on Wednesday to determine whether thousands of houses and apartments damaged by the quake could be reoccupied.

Officials estimated that they had inspected nearly 3,000 residential and commercial buildings by Wednesday evening but said there were many more still to be checked for structural soundness and other safety problems.

But despite the deployment, many residents said they had not been contacted by authorities, leaving them in an uncomfortable limbo--trying to measure whether it was worse to spend another night camping in the cold or to return to houses and apartments riddled with cracks and sagging roofs.

Residents and business people flooded the city’s dozen hot lines with more than 200 calls an hour, and many others found the phones busy. Inspectors on the street were besieged by worried residents who were looking for reassurance.

Even when the inspectors had declared buildings safe, they found that many residents were too nervous to move back in, particularly after two sizable aftershocks Wednesday afternoon. Inspectors spent much of their time trying to persuade the fearful to return home.

The task of inspecting for quake damage--from the north end of the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro--proved far greater than officials had anticipated. Initially, they hoped to complete the bulk of the work by Tuesday evening, but it continued through Wednesday and is expected to take at least one more day.

“It’s a much bigger job than after the riots,” said Art Johnson, the second in command in the city’s Department of Building and Safety. “Then (damage) was pretty much restricted to commercial corridors. . . . We didn’t have to fan out into neighborhoods for mile after mile after mile.”

At the end of the day Wednesday, building officials were tabulating information from the damage survey and said they plan to release results today. They said computer problems and other glitches had delayed a more prompt assessment of the damage.

Warren O’Brien, general manager of the Department of Building and Safety, said he expects “at least a couple hundred” structures to be condemned, meaning they will need to be torn down or undergo major repairs to be safe.

As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, at least 217 buildings were already condemned, said Greig Smith, chief of staff for Councilman Hal Bernson, in whose district much of the damage occurred.

The vast majority of the condemned structures were houses and apartment complexes, and most were in the San Fernando Valley, the epicenter.

In Santa Monica, officials said nearly half of the 500 structures inspected there had been declared at least temporarily uninhabitable, including several along the popular pedestrian mall, the Third Street Promenade. Reports of damaged and condemned buildings also were being compiled as far away as Pomona and Azusa.

The total damage assessment for the region remained imprecise but Gov. Pete Wilson projected it could reach $15 billion to $30 billion.

Preliminary checks with Los Angeles officials showed that structures built after standards were tightened in 1973 fared better in Monday’s earthquake. Inspectors said the bulk of dozens of buildings that have already been condemned were built before the 1971 Sylmar earthquake prompted a revision of Los Angeles’ building codes.

But Chet Widom, president-elect of the American Institute of Architects, said there was a disturbing lack of consistency to much of the damage.

“There doesn’t seem to be a trend from what we can gather,” said Widom, whose own Santa Monica office suffered serious damage despite an earthquake retrofitting six years ago. “We’re seeing all kinds of buildings in various kinds of failure.”

Los Angeles doubled the number of inspectors on the streets Wednesday--to 540, including 40 volunteers from the Assn. of Structural Engineers. But even with the extra inspectors, and working 12-hour shifts, progress was slow because of the widespread damage.

Warren O’Brien, general manager of the Department of Building and Safety, said the time spent reassuring residents was slowing up the inspections themselves.

“We are being besieged because everyone wants to talk to us and tell us their story,” O’Brien said. “We are trying to be polite and considerate, but it slows us down a lot.”

The officials urged residents to be patient and, with suspect buildings, to wait until they receive official clearance before moving back. But many residents found the question of safety clouded by other issues, ranging from fear to financial insecurity.

At the Saticoy Apartments along Saticoy Street in Canoga Park, tenants were weighing the battered appearance of their homes against the assurances of their landlord that the building was safe. The rear apartments had moved several inches, and teetered precariously above several thin concrete stilts.

“The owner says it’s safe, but with all the cracks all over . . .” said Felix Galarza.

“If there’s another earthquake,” said his neighbor, Lucy Garavito, 16, “it will fall.”

As the residents pondered their options shortly after the quake, apartment owner Robert Thum said the damage was merely cosmetic. “Sure, they’re safe,” he said. He said the large fissures in the building were the result of brittle stucco. “The building is earthquake-built and it will move but it won’t break,” Thum said. “The stucco is solid, so it breaks.”

At another Canoga Park apartment, Dianne Herrmann stared through cracks in the walls so large that she could see the sky. She wanted to move her family out, but said she did not have the money. “We don’t have anyplace to go,” Herrmann said. “We have to stay until we figure out what to do.”

The city’s Housing Department was trying to inform people that they might have the money to move, even without government assistance. Landlords are required to return and advance rent for uninhabitable buildings, along with any deposits. And although the city’s rent stabilization law allows two weeks to refund the money, Housing Department chief Gary Squier said many building owners had agreed to reimburse tenants more promptly.

If the refunds are not enough to allow tenants to move into new homes, additional funds will be available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and city Housing Department, Squier said. At another apartment complex on Van Nuys Boulevard, residents took matters into their own hands when city inspectors told them it might take several days for them to come by. The residents of the 48-unit building hired their own contractor to check on the building.

“The tenants took over the building,” said resident Kitty Rourke.

Although the contractor spotted a few problems, residents nonetheless felt comfortable enough to move back in. “Where else can you go?” asked Judith Tuckich. “The longer you stay away, the harder it is to move back in.”

The bulk of the inspectors, nearly 400, were assigned to the Valley. They fanned out from the Van Nuys government center for a block-by-block review of the hardest hit communities, such as Northridge.

At some locations, such as the Northgate apartment complex on a Granada Hills hillside, inspectors made their calls quickly. Three inspectors visiting there found concrete staircases buckled and deep cracks radiating through walls and columns supporting underground garages.

“These units here--they gotta get everybody out of here, right now,” said inspector Bob Sunday, nodding in the direction of residents who were packing up furniture, clothes and bedding. Yellow tape and red warning signs were up on the building within minutes.

Elsewhere, a quick drive-by was enough to assure inspectors that problems were not severe.

The weary inspectors sometimes spent as much time addressing the cracks in human psyches as those in buildings. “We’re running into that a lot--people are scared and just want reassurance,” said inspector George Meyer.

Building and Safety Department spokesman David Keim and others said they fear many people in the city have unnecessarily fled to parks and other open spaces, and that they only need reassurance that their homes can be safely occupied.

“We don’t want anyone homeless if they don’t have to be,” said Pat Talley, an inspector working out of the department’s Northridge substation Wednesday.

The inspection teams tried to take time to offer some quick advice--strap down that water heater, cover that fallen chimney in case of rain, secure that now unfenced swimming pool from wandering children.

They also dispensed comfort. Inspectors walked through Leigh Laird’s home even though her husband, a construction supervisor, already had told her it was fine.

“Thank you,” she sighed, after inspectors gave her the thumbs up. “I guess we’re all just paranoid.”

Several Los Angeles City Council members had complained Tuesday that districts away from the epicenter were receiving little attention from inspectors, but they said the problem seemed to be largely remedied by Wednesday.

Still, some residents in the outlying areas couldn’t help but feel neglected.

Maria Contreras and about a dozen other residents were camped outside their South-Central Los Angeles apartment building, hoping that building inspectors would come. None did.

“It’s like we have been forgotten,” Contreras said. “No one has come by to help us.”

The two-story, four-unit apartment had been lifted about six inches from its foundation and stood at a slight angle. Broken glass littered the floor of the ramshackle rooms. The walls were cracked in the closet that serves as the bedroom for Contreras’ two daughters, ages 5 and 7.

The building owner, Lee Linden, said he had been trying for two days to reach the Building and Safety Department, but that the line was always busy.

“You can’t get through,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of it (getting no response). I’m doing what I can do.”

City officials said they hope to learn something from the pattern of the destruction, when more thorough reports are compiled.

Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, chairman of the council’s Building and Safety Committee, said Wednesday that the panel will discuss on Monday possible changes in the Building Code to strengthen older residential buildings such as the Northridge apartment complex that collapsed, killing 16.

He said the most immediate problem that the panel will discuss is whether the city is moving fast enough to inspect buildings damaged in the quake to see if they are habitable.

“We will start the inquiry,” he said. “I expect the inquiry to start a lot of probing.”