Swarm of Aftershocks Hit L.A. : Race Is On to Set Up Tent Cities as Rain Nears : Disaster: Power is restored to most customers, even as four powerful, midmorning jolts rock the quake area in quick succession. Death toll is now put at 55.

Four strong aftershocks hit the San Fernando Valley in a single hour Friday, sending the swelling number of displaced people gathered in public parks ducking for cover while all of Los Angeles braced for yet another trial this weekend: rain.

Two storms were expected to move through the area between Saturday and Monday, bringing high winds and as much as half an inch of rain. Many of the estimated 14,500 victims of the Northridge quake who are sleeping in public parks and parking lots scrambled to buy protective gear, from ponchos to tarps large enough to cover an entire family. The National Guard raced to set up 6,000 tents across the city.

“Californians usually welcome rain,” meteorologist Harry Woolford said. “But not this time. For many people, it couldn’t be a worse weekend for rain.”

Even as power was restored to virtually all of Los Angeles and the water was deemed safe to drink in some parts, the four powerful jolts at midmorning Friday reminded residents that this seismic catastrophe was not over. The aftershocks ranged in magnitude from 4.0 to 4.6 and were centered beneath the city of San Fernando, five miles northeast of Northridge.

In other developments Friday:

* Emotions still ran high among displaced people seeking quake relief as a 12th Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster center opened. At an assistance site in Northridge, desperate quake victims pressed for aid in long, angry, tearful queues. “We’re living in our car,” one woman cried plaintively as a FEMA worker begged for patience.

* The death toll rose to 55 as four more fatalities were reported by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. All died on the day of the quake, but no other details were released. The Hospital Council of Southern California said 6,547 patients had been treated and released from hospitals and 1,292 patients admitted for treatment.

* The Los Angeles Unified School District announced that it will open all but 97 of its hardest hit campuses Tuesday. The 97 severely damaged schools, most of them in the West Valley, will remain closed indefinitely, Supt. Sid Thompson said. School authorities are hoping that safe portions of those campuses, which have more 100,000 students, can be opened soon.

* Mayor Richard Riordan said he will urge businesses to stagger work schedules and use four-day weeks and telecommuting to alleviate traffic jams. Such measures were highly successful in preventing tie-ups during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Transportation officials came to the grim conclusion Friday that alternate routes can handle only 60% of the traffic being diverted from broken freeways. The city Department of Transportation rushed to boost shuttle services from Metrolink. “We must get into alternative transportation,” an official said.

* The destruction total mounted as about 800 city inspectors surveyed hundreds of buildings, estimating $373 million in damage. More than 400 buildings were deemed unsafe to inhabit so far, leaving at least 4,800 people officially without homes. The city pledged to demolish buildings at no cost to owners and to begin this weekend to pick up street rubble that residents in the Valley place at the curb.

* The federal government, which normally pays for all government costs for emergency assistance--such as police, fire and water delivery--for the first 72 hours after a disaster announced Friday that it would pay such expenses for an additional five days--through Jan. 25 and possibly longer if necessary.

* Friday also brought promises from politicians at every level of government about expediting aid. Henry Cisneros, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said he will speed up approval of $83 million in housing vouchers, low-interest loans and other quake aid. State legislators promised to introduce bills to increase tax deductions for earthquake damage and speed unemployment benefits. And the City Council asked the Department of Water and Power to find a way to offer customers in the quake zone discounts or payment deferrals on their water and electric bills if their homes were damaged or destroyed.

The Next Test

Los Angeles struggled toward recovery Friday in fits and starts that felt like one step forward and two steps back. Electricity was restored to virtually all of the city with only a handful of customers still without power.

But 20,000 customers from the Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains remained without water. Water on the Westside was declared safe to drink and need not be boiled, but water supplied north of Sunset Boulevard was expected to remain unsafe at least through the weekend.

Then came word of the rain. The weather’s unfortunate turn came as inspectors declared building after building uninhabitable and the newly homeless headed to parks and parking lots for a place to sleep. The encamped population climbed from 13,800 to about 14,500. Forecasters warned the storms would arrive this weekend.

Working frantically to beat the storm, emergency workers scrambled Friday to convince earthquake victims to leave city parks. As many as 10 National Guard operated tent cities were being erected for emergency shelter.

“This is literally emergency shelters,” said Maj. Gen. Tandy Bozeman. “They’re gorgeous green. The idea is to have it in place before it rains.”

Efforts to clear the parks stalled despite the presence of “reassurance teams” that fanned out to urge people to leave their camps and head to city shelters. Although some of those who were camped out took that advice, new arrivals outnumbered them.

“This is big,” said Geoffrey Garfield, an aide to Mayor Richard Riordan. “It’s our major effort right now. . . . We have to get the people out of these encampments.”

According to Garfield and other city officials, huge National Guard tents such as those used to shelter people who lost homes in Hurricane Andrew had been delivered and were available by Friday afternoon. But the huge tents take hours to raise, and officials still were trying to decide exactly which locations were best suited for them.

The decision to put up the tents was made reluctantly and only after city officials became convinced that there was no other way to protect dislocated people from the coming rains. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, the tent cities became near-permanent encampments, and it took the concentrated efforts of law enforcement agencies to ultimately force some people out of the tents.

Nevertheless, Riordan and other city officials recommended Friday that the tents go up before the rain arrives, possibly Saturday night or early Sunday morning. The storm is expected to taper off to scattered showers by Monday.

“Some people may get the feeling they can stay there permanently,” Riordan conceded. “But with the rains coming, we have no choice.”

The city of San Fernando was also scheduled to erect several tents within its city limits, officials said.

As the weather reports predicted an uncomfortable weekend, residents began watching the darkening sky and hunting down provisions. Outside the Home Depot in Canoga Park, Billaldo Jeronimo held up a tarp he had just purchased.

“We sleep outside in the parking lot of our apartment,” said the 18-year-old, who has been living in a makeshift camp in North Hills with his wife and 6-month-old son. “On Saturday, they say it will rain and we will have only this.”

Jack Welsh of Canoga Park was just trying to stay dry as he shopped for gear. When asked what he would do if faced with the choice of getting wet or re-entering his quake-damaged home, he replied: “I’m taking the rain outside.”

Meanwhile, as phone calls deluged the Valley from throughout the world, Pacific Bell officials in the company’s Northridge processing center struggled to repair roofs that could leave equipment exposed to the weekend rains. The center is handling 12 million calls a day, 7 million more than normal.

More Aftershocks

At times there is a sense that the city could handle almost anything, even the rain, if the shaking would only stop. The swarm of aftershocks that hit at midmorning Friday sent the already shellshocked diving for cover for a fifth day.

The earth’s rocking caused a fire to erupt at a collapsed apartment building on Victory Boulevard in Reseda when the shaking ignited a car trapped beneath the building, Los Angeles City Fire Chief Mike Littleton said.

“With the aftershocks moving things around, the car’s frayed wires rubbed together and ignited the fire which spread to the building,” he said.

The blaze was controlled in less than an hour--even though the building was deemed too dangerous for firefighters to venture inside. Residents were moving their belongings out of another condemned building nearby when National Guard troops began yelling “Fire! Fire!”

“Me and my mom dropped what we were carrying and ran out of the building,” Charla Pang said wearily. “All we want to do is get our stuff into storage and then find a place to live.”

After the aftershocks, Cal State Northridge President Blenda Wilson announced that all 53 of the major structures on campus would have to be reinspected before a final damage assessment is made. Before the aftershocks hit, engineers were prepared to announce that 80% of the buildings had made it through the temblor and its initial aftershocks without debilitating structural damage.

The campus may reopen by Feb. 14, two weeks later than the scheduled start of the second semester. “We might have to hold classes in trailers, community education buildings, churches and community agencies,” Wilson said.

Burying the Dead

As the earth kept rumbling, Los Angeles residents began the grim task of burying the dead.

Ted Fichtner, the first quake victim to be laid to rest, was interred in blue jeans and a flannel shirt given to him by the neighborhood that had adopted him 10 years ago when he was homeless.

Fichtner died inside the donated camper in which he lived in Van Nuys when a microwave oven struck him in the head.

Two hours later, 4-year-old Amy Tyre-Vigil was remembered in a service at a Reseda temple. Her short life was filled with promise and possessions--different from Fichtner’s in every way--but it ended within minutes of his when her parents’ affluent Sherman Oaks hillside house collapsed around her.

As of Friday, the casualty count from the earthquake was continuing to rise and hospital officials expressed alarm about the dwindling number of beds in county intensive care units.

These are the beds for the most acutely ill, people on life support who need 24-hour care. There are 1,750 such beds in the county, but only 216 remained unoccupied as of midday Friday.

“We’re becoming concerned,” said David Langness, a spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California. He said hospitals in San Bernardino, Ventura and Orange counties have been put on alert.

In addition to the usual run of heart attacks, difficult pregnancies and other patients with potential life-threatening diseases, county hospitals have had to cope with nearly 1,300 patients admitted for earthquake-related injuries, some of them in critical condition.

Adding to the problem are the 915 patients who were evacuated from more than two dozen quake-damaged hospitals.

Three hospitals remained totally shut down: St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, and the Psychiatric Hospital in the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center Complex. Many others were operating at reduced levels.

Government Tries to Help

Friday also brought more promises from government officials who say they are expediting aid to quake victims.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to approve an $83-million grant to pay for housing vouchers, low-interest loans and other earthquake related costs, city officials said. The money was expected in July to pay for community development projects, such as job training and low-income housing construction, primarily in South-Central Los Angeles.

However, Cisneros told city officials that he would speed up the grant application so that the city can get the money as early as next week and distribute it through the city’s Community Development Department.

Councilman Mike Hernandez, chairman of the council’s Committee on Economic Development, said Cisneros assured him that the original money that the city had hoped to get in July will also be granted.

Hernandez and other city officials praised Cisneros for moving so quickly to respond to the city’s needs. “It’s the kind of stuff that we didn’t get during the civil disturbances,” he said.

Councilman Joel Wachs said: “Mr. Cisneros has been nothing more than remarkable.”

The council approved a plan to use the city’s public access cable TV station, Channel 35, to disseminate emergency information in English, Spanish and other languages widely spoken in the city.

The council also approved a motion by Councilwoman Laura Chick, instructing the city’s Department of Water and Power to provide to residents whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged relief from paying DWP bills. The motion did not provide specifics on how the DWP would do that but instructed the department to study all possible alternatives, including payment deferrals and discounts.

A bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law Thursday night by Gov. Pete Wilson extends the arraignment period for criminal suspects from 48 hours to seven days. The legislators said such a move was necessary because there are several quake damaged courthouses where arraignments can not take place. The bill will expire after 30 days.