Residents Clean Up After Quake, Ponder Options : Recovery: Although the region was spared most of Monday’s destruction, many homes and businesses sustained damage, and the newly homeless wonder where they will end up.

Although the San Fernando Valley took the brunt of the Northridge quake, Central Los Angeles did not escape devastation.

The magnitude 6.6 quake drove many Central Los Angeles residents from their homes and into makeshift encampments or temporary quarters. Already beleaguered merchants are counting their losses.

Scores of skittish residents camped out in vacant lots on Hoover Street. The dome atop the Metropolitan Community Church on Washington Boulevard collapsed. Gas lines ruptured in Watts, chimneys toppled in West Adams, and glass shattered everywhere. There were countless images on television of the collapsed Santa Monica Freeway, and countless questions on how long Mid-City residents will suffer gridlock conditions because of it.

Older buildings throughout the area were chipped and cracked, many to the point of being uninhabitable. Preliminary estimates late last week indicated 268 structures in Central Los Angeles sustained damage totaling about $6.9 million. City officials were quick to point out that those figures were certain to rise as building inspectors continue surveying.

Among the hardest hit were residents of two apartment buildings near Adams and Crenshaw boulevards.

At 2557 Bronson Ave., one block east of Crenshaw Boulevard, the pale blue apartment building, home to about nine families, was evacuated and sealed off by police officers Monday morning. The building, estimated to be 70 years old, shifted on its foundation, knocking over part of a wall between it and another apartment house. The quake tore a crack along the bottom of the building.

Many of the residents escaped through windows on the south side of the building, pushing aside safety bars. Furniture and mattresses sat outside as residents stared in disbelief at what was once their home.

The building stood vacant for most of Monday, with a few residents such as Evangelina Diaz and her family managing to crawl through windows into their first-floor apartment.

Her husband, Miguel Enrique Cortez, had managed the building for nearly a year. As he struggled to lift a small heater, he looked back and shrugged. “A lot of stuff will stay. We’re just trying to get the clothes, tables and chairs out,” he said. “For now, the most important thing is to get out. We’ll come back when they let us, that’s if they don’t destroy it first.”

It was unclear when residents would be allowed to return to retrieve personal items. The building, which was in foreclosure, will have to be demolished because of the structural damage, said George Willert, a court-appointed field supervisor who is overseeing the foreclosure.

“We’ve already relocated some of the families who were still there, and another family has gone to stay with family,” Willert said. “We’re looking for space in some of our other buildings right now.”

“I guess I just have to wait,” said Raul Sanchez, 34, a roofer. “I didn’t manage to get anything out, not even a change of clothes to go to work tomorrow. But I guess I can’t go to work because then I won’t be able to get my things out.”

Sanchez and three roommates spent the night in his car at a parking lot. They said they planned to move to another apartment nearby but had to gather money for rent.

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Around the corner at 2334 Crenshaw Blvd., Raphael Garcia joined the ranks of Good Samaritans around the Southland who extended a hand to their neighbors. Garcia helped rescue a family trapped on the second floor of the apartment building where he lived.

“A lot of people were banging on doors and they were trapped,” said Garcia, 33, a factory worker who was preparing for work when the earthquake struck. “I was out here (in front of the building) with my family, and another guy showed up and he said to me: ‘We got to help, there are people trapped in there.’ I can’t even tell you what he looked like or who he was because it was dark outside still, and I’d never seen him before in my life, but we went in and started pushing open doors.”

While Garcia and two others helped pry doors open for neighbors, they realized a family with at least two small children was trapped in a second-floor unit in the rear of the Spanish-style building.

“Somehow (the parents) got some sheets and tied them together and managed to let the kids down. I can’t even tell you how many there were,” Garcia said.

“All I can say is we’re all human and neighbors, and I had to help.”

The building, which has about 18 units, was heavily damaged. The front steps were split in half from top to bottom, and the wall on the southwestern corner had buckled to a 45-degree angle. The earthquake left a large crack across the front.

Now Garcia and his family need help. Nearly 12 hours after he helped rescue his neighbors, Garcia, his wife and two children were trying to find a place to live. His sister, who lives nearby, offered to put them up for a time until they can find another apartment, but Garcia worries that a shortage of money and safe dwellings may prevent them from moving.

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In West Adams, most of the wooden two- and three-story Queen Anne, Victorian and Craftsman homes built between the late 1800s and the 1920s escaped major damage, said Norma Latimer, president of the West Adams Heritage Assn. “These older houses stood up pretty well,” she said.

But, she added, the earthquake jolted a few homes on Adams Boulevard west of Arlington Avenue, shifting them on their foundations and knocking down chimneys.

Natalie Neith, a heritage association board member, said that on the 2100 block of 20th Street, a chimney fell onto a neighbor’s new car and two chimneys toppled from the roof of a vacant house next door.

“We had ours rebuilt, so it’s OK, but a lot of chimneys look like they’re severely damaged,” Neith said.

Similar problems were reported on other blocks in the area.

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At apartment buildings in Echo Park, Pico-Union, Westlake, Koreatown, South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles, residents jittery about the possibility of another large earthquake set up makeshift tents or huddled under blankets on sidewalks, in vacant lots, parks or in cars.

“We were scared to stay in there with the kids,” said Dora Alvarado as she sat with her two children, husband and father-in-law in an empty parking lot on Hoover Street that she and several other neighbors have transformed into their temporary home.

“The building isn’t really that badly damaged, but they say there will be a lot of aftershocks and it’s too scary to stay in there,” she said, pointing to a multistory stucco building directly behind the parking lot. “We only go into the apartment to cook, and then we rush out of there.”

Alvarado and other apartment dwellers said they were waiting for clearance from building inspectors so they could return to their homes. The inspectors, stretched to their limit, had not reached all the questionable structures.

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Police at the 77th Street Division received several calls about traffic accidents and people sustaining minor cuts and bruises, but said the load of calls was no heavier than usual. In the 4000 and 4100 blocks of South Figueroa Street, several buildings suffered damage running into the thousands of dollars.

Old two-story buildings along several major thoroughfares sustained cracks, sending bricks and plaster cascading to the sidewalk. One Vernon Avenue building lost its entire facade, which ended up in a two-foot-high pile of bricks and steel beams in the street. Elsewhere, cinder block walls tumbled into alleys.

One heavily hit building was the main office of Founder’s National Bank at 3910 Martin Luther King Blvd., which sustained structural damage estimated as high as $500,000. Employees were relocated to other branches, and the main office remained closed while crews worked to shore up pillars and clean up.

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In the Downtown area, businesses reported that although nerves were shaken, damage was limited to broken windows and cracked walls. Still, many businesses remained closed Tuesday to allow for damage assessment and the return of power and water.

The Central Library sustained no structural damage; even pictures and wall hangings remained intact, according to Bob Reagan, library spokesman. But the library and all the branches were closed Tuesday to allow workers to put fallen books back on shelves and assess damage at the harder-hit sites in the San Fernando Valley.

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In Little Tokyo, the carpeting in the Japan America Theatre on San Pedro Street sustained some minor water damage when sprinkler pipes jostled by the earthquake broke, according to Jerry Yoshitomi, executive director of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center. But Yoshitomi said the theater would be “up and running” in time for its next show, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group on Monday.

The Japanese American National Museum on 1st Street was closed Tuesday and Wednesday while workers straightened artifacts and historic photographs that were knocked from their stands. *

Store owners found merchandise strewn about and shelves knocked over when they opened their doors Monday morning.

Along Crenshaw Boulevard, most stores and businesses were closed and the normally bustling corridor was eerily still. Shards of glass littered sidewalks, window panes were hastily boarded up and a few business owners were assessing damage and beginning the arduous process of cleaning up.

The Tokyo Aquarium in the 4600 block of Adams Boulevard looked as if a river ran through it, with fish tanks knocked to the floor and their former occupants everywhere.

“There was water all over the floor,” said Hong Suk Kang, who has owned the store for about 15 years. “I’m afraid the fish will die. We have no electricity to run the tanks.”

Kang’s wife, Yeo Soon, looked around the store and bowed her head. “We don’t have any quake insurance. What are we going to do?” she said. “We have fire and other insurance but no earthquake insurance.” She estimated the damage to be at least $50,000.

Times staff writer Duke Helfand and special correspondents Erin J. Aubry and Iris Yokoi contributed to this report.