EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : As Novelty Dims, Reality Takes Over : Reaction: Residents confront exhaustion, restlessness and irritability as they face months of disruption.

As the fear and excitement from this week’s big quake started to wear thin, San Fernando Valley residents began to face reality Thursday: Their lives would not return to normal for months, if at all--a fact that made most people decidedly unhappy.

During a long, hot day, tempers occasionally flared, motorists burst into tears when told that they had to take long detours because of damaged freeways, and camping outside quake-ravaged homes did not seem so novel as it had a day earlier.

Parents sought refuge from children and vice versa, and people all over were exhausted, restless and irritable.

“I don’t know how long we can do this,” said Sonia Gaitan, 29, who has been sleeping in a Reseda park with her husband and two young sons ever since the family’s apartment was badly damaged.

Yet there was plenty of evidence that relief was nowhere in sight. Moving companies were overwhelmed, mail delivery and garbage pickup were slow, and psychiatrists warned everyone to take it easy as they face what is a natural post-disaster reaction: crankiness.

“Some of the bonding, sense of purpose and the need to do things together evaporates,” a few days after such major disasters, said Bruce Steinberg, a Tarzana psychiatrist who opened his office Wednesday and was deluged with requests by patients seeking to reschedule appointments missed because of Monday’s temblor.

“People have to understand the sense of community can deteriorate again, so they have to keep doing the things that did work,” he said, especially being willing to help others and asking for help if they need it.

A natural disaster “really intensifies a person’s vulnerability and fragility,” Steinberg said.

Four days after the quake, people long for the routine: safe homes, letter-filled mailboxes, stores that are open and nearby, regular garbage pickup and intact freeways.

If not typical, John Demos’ frustrating day was not all that unusual either.

A Santa Clarita resident who works in Burbank, it took Demos two hours--instead of his customary 45 minutes--to drive to work Thursday morning via car-jammed Sierra Highway. In the afternoon, when he decided to go by the federal disaster relief center in Sylmar to ask about a loan to repair his quake-damaged home, he got lost. The address the agency had publicized, he said, turned out to be “in the middle of the Tujunga Wash.”

Then, when he did arrive, “there’s 10,000 people out there waiting in line.”

Further, Demos got into an argument with an employee of Santa Clarita’s refuse collection agency because the company was charging residents to haul away damaged household items that did not fit into residents’ trash cans. Finally, he was told that it will take as much as a week for a building inspector to check his house, with its collapsed chimney and cracked walls.

“I don’t know, it just all got to me today,” Demos said.

In much of the quake-damaged area, some services are headed back toward normal. Garbage collection is a day or so behind throughout the Valley, but a Los Angeles city Bureau of Sanitation official promised that the agency would soon catch up. Also, in most cases, electricity has been restored and the last four closed Valley post offices were to reopen today.

Still, people with frayed nerves could not help but fixate on the things that were not working properly.

At a detour near the Simi Valley Freeway in Granada Hills, Mary Gentry got out of her car, walked up to a California Highway Patrol officer and burst into tears. Why, she wanted to know, did she have to take a one-mile detour on traffic-clogged side roads when her house was only a few minutes away?

“I have a trunk full of groceries with ice and milk, and it would take me five minutes from here,” Gentry pleaded. “I’m stuck. . . . It’s like you feel like everybody’s trying to make it hard for you. It’s more difficult to just do anything.”

Nearby, at the corner of Rinaldi Street and Woodley Avenue, a large aftershock had apparently broken a water main, and water was bubbling from a gaping hole in the street.

Juan Velez, 33, sat alone in front of his home, quietly watching the water--anything for a brief respite from the three children, ages 4, 8 and 11, who were holed up inside the house because schools remained closed.

“It’s been unbearable,” he said wearily, after spending several nights camped in his front yard and sleeping in the entryway of the house, poised to make a quick escape.

What the family wanted most was to have their electricity restored so they could go back to living their old lives.

“My God, I don’t know what (children) did without television or VCRs,” said his wife, Felicia Velez. “The kids won’t even pick up a book. They want to play Nintendo and watch TV. . . You don’t realize what you have until you don’t have it. Especially the kids, they’re so used to being entertained.”

Meanwhile, some busied themselves with impending moves from quake-damaged buildings.

At the Candlewood North Apartments in Northridge, a “For Lease” banner clashed with a note taped to the complex’s partially shattered front door that read, “Building Condemned. Do Not Enter.” Outside, Gary Moore, 28, sat on the curb--clothes, stereo system, bicycles and a few other personal items on the grass behind him.

“All the other stuff is still upstairs,” he said. “I called some moving places, I’ll check back later. I just want to move.”

And he wasn’t the only one.

Local moving companies and U-Haul franchises reported that business had doubled, and in some cases tripled.

“I’ve even had people call me at home,” said Al Diamond, general manager of C&M; Transfer, a moving company based in Arleta. “We’ve been getting at least 80 calls a day, and they’re not staying on the line very long if they find out we can’t help them. . . . They’re not in the shopping mode. They’re in the ‘Can you get me out of here now?’ mode.”

Granada Hills resident Cheryle Williams, 37, lives near where five homes burned down when a gas main ruptured because of the quake. In addition to dealing with the damage to her home--cracked walls, floors and a broken shower door--Williams, who operates a day-care center, said she also is temporarily jobless because her clients have taken the week off from work.

“Our dilemma is even more scary than some of our neighbors’,” Williams said. “I don’t really feel like I’m healing. . . . I feel like I’m in limbo.”

Williams said once she puts the mess she had called her household back in order, she plans to seek federal assistance to repair her house.

“We’re trying to figure out how we’re going to get it all back to normal,” she said. “I think it’s going to take a long time . . . probably months.”