EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Temblor Expected to Rock Southland’s Tourism : L.A., Orange Counties Could Lose Billions as Wary Visitors Shy Away

A new aftershock of the Northridge earthquake hit Friday as economists at Chapman University predicted a major drop in tourism that could cost Los Angeles and Orange counties as much as $4.6 billion this year.

“We had been expecting 5% increases in tourism spending in each county for 1994, but that was before Monday’s earthquake,” said Esmael Adibi, director of the private university’s Center for Economic Research.

A revised forecast now calls for a 10% to 20% drop in Los Angeles tourism and a 5% to 10% drop in Orange County, he said. San Francisco tourism dropped by 15% the year after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake rocked the Bay Area, he said.

Any anticipated economic benefit for Southern California from new construction activity in the wake of Monday’s quake, Adibi said, will be erased by the losses sustained by people who had no earthquake insurance and are not able to obtain government aid to repair quake damage to their properties.

The Chapman economics center estimated total physical damage from the magnitude 6.6 quake at a minimum of $7.8 billion, and Adibi estimated that no more than half will be covered by insurance or government grants.

The drops in tourism--which is a $20-billion annual industry in Los Angeles County and adds $6 billion a year to Orange County’s economy--will come because of people’s perception of Southern California as an unsafe area, Adibi said.

The combined impact of the earthquake, last fall’s wildfires and the 1992 Los Angeles riots “have such a great and lasting psychological impact on people that it will affect tourism dramatically,” he said. “Unlike the recent wildfires, which have a slim chance of occurring again, earthquakes can happen at any time, and that may keep people away.”

Chapman economists were not able to project regional tourism job losses. Adibi said the estimated loss of $2 billion to $4 billion in Los Angeles County and $300 million to $600 million in Orange County would come from a combination of reduced tourist spending and local employment cuts at hotels, restaurants, amusement parts and other tourist venues.