EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : East County Shifts to Long-Term Recovery : Aftermath: Tasks include repairing the Thousand Oaks Library and examining roads in hard-hit Simi Valley.

With aftershocks subsiding, water flowing to homes and street lamps aglow again, quake-rattled east Ventura County shifted this weekend from short-term emergency response to long-term recovery.

In the coming week, officials will be scrutinizing damaged roads in Simi Valley, a revised disaster plan in Moorpark and repairs to the popular Thousand Oaks Library.

By all accounts, the task is largest in Simi Valley, the Ventura County city closest to the epicenter of Monday’s 6.6-magnitude Northridge earthquake.

City Manager Lin Koester already has moved to speed the recovery with an emergency order waiving fees for building permits and safety plan reviews that residents will need to make repairs.

Building inspectors are working 12-hour shifts to chip away at the 4,000 damaged houses, businesses and public buildings that must be certified safe, said Assistant City Manager Mike Sedell.

City workers are patching fragmented sidewalks and buckled roads and filling sinkholes created when broken water mains washed away the earth beneath the streets.

Koester and other city department heads are shuffling work schedules and budgets to come up with enough staff and money to handle the work, Sedell said.

Detailed bills of earthquake-related repairs must be readied so the city can earn the 75% reimbursement of damage costs promised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Of the remaining amount, 75% is expected to be paid by the state, Sedell said.

There is no telling how long all this will take or cost, Sedell said.

Meanwhile, the city must carry on with daily duties ranging from preparing the weekly payroll to choosing a new police chief.

“On Monday, Day 1 of the earthquake, 100% of our resources were being devoted to immediate damage recovery,” he said. “We had to make sure we had power up again, we had to make sure we had our emergency services working--and they were working well--and we had to make sure the roads were open.”

“Today is Day 1 of the recovery process,” Sedell said Friday. “We’re deciding where our people get directed and where our resources need to be put.”

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Simi Valley is struggling to regain its daily routine around broken public buildings such as the Police Department, where damaged stairways have rendered the second floor unsafe for now, and the gymnasium at Simi Valley High School, which was made unusable by a cracked roof.

Seventeen city schools are set to reopen Monday and an additional nine are expected to follow on Tuesday, said Mary Beth Wolford, superintendent of the Simi Valley Unified School District.

Simi Valley High School will not open until Wednesday at the earliest, a district official said Saturday.

A student day off that was scheduled for Friday has been canceled, and all classes will meet as usual, Wolford said. In addition, the fall-winter school semester has been extended an extra week, through Friday, Feb. 4, so high school students will not have to take final exams as soon as they get back to school, she said.

Teachers will modify lessons to make room for the disaster, handing out fact sheets on earthquakes and letting students share their experiences with classmates, she said.

Repairs over the weekend should make the schools safe enough to pass inspection until the cosmetic touch-ups can be done, Wolford said.

“It won’t look so good, but we expect to get it ready so the kids can use the schools,” she said.

Meanwhile, the district--which did not carry earthquake insurance--will be deciding how to pay for repairs that will cost an estimated $3 million to $5 million, she said.

In Thousand Oaks, public buildings and private homes fared far better against the earthquake, which was damped somewhat by hard volcanic rock beneath the city’s streets, said City Manager Grant Brimhall.

Fewer than 15 homes in Thousand Oaks were left uninhabitable by earthquake damage, he said.

And a solid rock foundation left the massive new Civic Arts Plaza with no damage--even the scaffolding wasn’t disturbed, Brimhall said.

“If there’s ever an 8.0 or 9.0 in Southern California, that’s where I want to be,” he said.

The City Council on Tuesday is expected to waive permit fees for simple repairs such as replacing damaged water heaters, he said.

By Monday, city officials hope to have cost estimates on the damage suffered around Thousand Oaks.

The worst of it struck the Thousand Oaks Library, Brimhall said.

The earthquake shook loose sharp steel ceiling panels, which crashed to the floor and stabbed holes in the carpet.

“We’ve taken to calling it the ‘Ginsu Ceiling,’ ” quipped library Director Marvin Smith, who said library officials are considering replacing the ceiling with something less dangerous.

Fire sprinkler heads over the children’s section were sheared off in the temblor, and the resulting cascade of water soaked and ruined half the 20,000-book children’s collection and flooded the main floor.

But the building is insured and structurally intact, and most of the library’s 300,000 books were saved, so the library could be reopened within a month, he said.

In the meantime, the Newbury Park branch will take up the slack, adopting the main library’s hours of 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

Smith asked that patrons holding Thousand Oaks library books keep them until the library is reopened.

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The Conejo Valley Unified School District is assessing what looked on Friday to be an estimated $300,000 to $500,000 worth of minor property damage, ranging from leaky pipes to cracked plaster, said Supt. Jerry Gross.

Aftershocks measured Wednesday at 5.1 on the Richter scale provided perfect earthquake drills, and “the kids responded remarkably,” Gross said.

Like the Simi Valley school district, the Conejo Valley district is instructing counselors and school psychologists next week to be ready to soothe students’ frayed nerves, he said.

With quake jitters keeping some students out of school, the district is also seeking waivers of state attendance requirements that otherwise could have cost the district a total of $20,000 to $40,000 in state funding because of absences, he said.

In Moorpark, school officials said they were grateful that the district suffered only minimal damage in the earthquake. Though the schools could have reopened Tuesday morning, administrators waited until Wednesday to allow school employees and students and their families to get their lives back in order, said Greg Barker, a member of the Moorpark Unified School District Board.

The area’s community college campus did not fare as well. Although classes resumed Wednesday at Moorpark College, both the library and the gymnasium were cordoned off and under repair for extensive quake damage.

Lighting fixtures and air-conditioning ducts balanced precariously on metal beams after tremors loosened them from their moorings in the gym ceiling. College officials said the gym basketball court will stay closed about two weeks, although dance classes resumed in the gym’s classrooms Wednesday.

The library’s classrooms are scheduled to reopen this week, but the college library itself will remain closed for weeks or even months, college officials said. They said they hoped to move some of the books to another location on campus so students can use them.

Moorpark city officials have begun editing their fledgling citywide disaster plan to include lessons learned in the Northridge quake, said Mayor Paul Lawrason.

Cellular phones the city bought for emergencies were useless for the first hour or so after the earthquake, which knocked out radio transponders supporting the system, Lawrason said.

However, service was restored quickly and the telephones proved vital to helping the city respond to the disaster, he said.

But Lawrason said officials may consider including the city’s walkie-talkie system in the disaster plan to bolster the communication network.

They also are reviewing their emergency broadcast system--particularly in light of power outages that cut off information from the city’s local-access cable to many Moorpark residents.

Three years in the making, the Moorpark disaster plan should be finished and ready to go within six months, he said.

“Without any question, we will be doing more desktop simulations (of disasters), then some simulations right out there in the community,” Lawrason said Friday. “This thing brings it right into focus that we really need to be prepared.”

Times staff writer Constance Sommer contributed to this story.

Scheduled Simi School Reopenings

Monday

Abraham Lincoln, Atherwood, Berylwood, Crestview, Hollow Hills, Justin, Madera, Mountain View, Park View, Simi Elementary, Sycamore, Vista, Hillside, Sinaloa, Royal High, Apollo and Adult Education

Tuesday

Big Springs, Garden Grove, Katherine, Knolls, Santa Susana, Township, White Oak, Sequoia and Valley View

Wednesday or later

Simi Valley High