Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Simi Valley Elderly Are Hit Hard by Earthquake : Recovery: Many are residents of mobile home parks, which took a pounding. Setting things right will be expensive.

As many Simi Valley residents piece their lives back together in the wake of Monday’s earthquake, hundreds of the city’s most vulnerable citizens are still struggling to cope with the disaster.

Many of the city’s elderly, living in mobile home parks in Simi Valley’s hard-hit east end, are still without water, gas or electricity because of line breaks.

They are staying in shelters or with relatives or sleeping in their cars, returning to their crumpled mobile homes each day to seek out friends and wait for inspectors to tell them if their coaches are inhabitable.

“For many of these people it’s very unsettling, because their homes are everything to them,” said Alice Martens, who manages Susana Woods, a 139-coach park inhabited almost entirely by senior citizens. “Now they’ve been cut off. A lot of people are feeling hopeless.”

Clyde and Marjorie Lynch have been staying with their daughter since their mobile home at Susana Woods buckled and slid 4 feet off its supports.

“I’m on a teeter-totter,” said Marjorie Lynch, 73. “When I’m at my daughter’s, I feel like I should be here in case the inspectors come by. And when I’m here, I get so upset I just can’t take it.”

Choking back tears, Lynch gestured to one side of the coach, which is tilted 3 feet off the ground.

“I made my grandchildren come in through there so they wouldn’t get my carpet dirty,” she said, pointing to a side door that hung half off its hinges.

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As an aftershock shook the awning outside Nancy Moore’s nearby coach, she moaned in despair.

“Oh, God, when is this going to end?” asked Moore, 58. Her mobile home sank 2 feet during the quake, forcing metal supports up through her living room floor. “I’m tired, tired, tired.”

At Friendly Village, a mobile home park on the west side of town, Theodora Rocke tried to coax her mother to stay in a hotel.

“You’ll be much more comfortable,” Rocke told her. “You can’t stay here alone.”

Rocke had driven from her home in Orange County to help her mother, whose mobile home was one of 189 in the park that were badly damaged.

“I don’t want to go to any damn motel,” said Maurine Hemphill, 78. “I want to stay here, where I can be with my friends.”

Red Cross volunteers are delivering meals to senior citizens at five mobile home parks, and volunteers from Oasis, a nonprofit agency in Simi Valley that assists the elderly, are visiting the parks to offer blankets and food.

Oasis also is providing money for medicine, eyeglasses and hearing aids that may have been lost in the confusion after the quake.

“We’re doing everything we can think of,” Oasis director Veronica Spalding said. “If someone tells us they need something, we’re trying to get it for them.”

She said the agency also is seeking residents willing to take in senior citizens until the coach repair work is finished.

The Simi Valley Senior Center is helping residents who are seeking financial aid from the government.

“We’re here to offer a quiet place where seniors can come to relax and get away from the stress of the disaster,” said Kathryn Oliver, senior services coordinator. “We can also help them figure out where to go to get help from the government so they can get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”

Repairing individual coaches can cost from $800 to $8,000, according to residents and managers at mobile home parks around the city. Earthquake braces, which provide extra support, cost an additional $2,500.

“This is going to be really hard on the ones without insurance,” Martens said. “And I know there are plenty.”

Under state law, coaches damaged in an earthquake must be examined by state inspectors before residents can move back in.

Residents will be charged $120 for the inspections, said Jack Kerin, field operations manager for the mobile home division of the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Two offices are being set up in Los Angeles County to process permit applications starting Monday, but none have yet been scheduled for Ventura County, Kerin said.

“If there is a demand, we may be able to get a temporary office in Ventura,” he said.

There is a state mobile home ombudsman to handle individual problems. The telephone number is (800) 952-5275.

FYI

To find out more about emergency services for the elderly, contact Oasis of Simi Valley, 5649 East Pittman St., at 526-3009 or the Simi Valley Senior Citizens Center, 3900 Avenida Simi, at 526-9237.