EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Valley ‘Tent Cities’ Endure Rain as Residents Refuse to Go Home

Cold rain poured down Monday night on four San Fernando Valley “tent cities” erected to shelter about 4,000 earthquake refugees--many of them driven by fear of aftershocks to remain outdoors even though their apartments and houses had been declared safe to reoccupy.

Some were still so afraid of the gradually dwindling tremors that they insisted on sleeping on the cold ground, refusing cots offered by the Salvation Army.

“Some people don’t want anything but the ground,” said Salvation Army Maj. Darvin Carpenter at the center in Lanark Park in Canoga Park, where about 1,200 people were huddled under canvas for the night.

“It’s going to be difficult if it rains long and hard. I wish I could tell you it won’t be messy, but it will,” he predicted.

Salvation Army officials estimated there were another 1,000 to 1,500 people in tents at the Winnetka Recreation Center and Park, where Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger M. Mahony urged some of them to return to their homes if they had been declared safe.

“But they’re afraid to go,” traumatized by their narrow escapes and the continuing rumbles in the earth, Mahony said as he stood under an umbrella in the rain outside a Salvation Army canteen.

Nearby, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials who said they had been working since 7 a.m. continued filling out application relief forms as refugees lined up for supper of tuna sandwiches and soup.

Rain began falling shortly before 8 p.m. Hail struck Agoura Hills and snow closed the Grapevine, the pass carrying Interstate 5 over the mountains about 50 miles to the north of the Valley.

About 1,500 people gathered in the tents at Reseda Park, said Red Cross site Manager Bill Fletcher. From 600 to 1,200 others occupied tents at Valley Plaza Park in North Hollywood.

A dwindling number hung on in private tents and other makeshift shelters in parks outside the tent cities--erected by the National Guard when rain was forecast. In the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, which covers Arleta and Pacoima, the number shrank to about 200--about 60 at Paxton Park, another 35 at Devonwood Park and 125 at Hansen Dam, a police spokesman said.

While much of the attention about last week’s 6.6-magnitude earthquake has been focused on places of large-scale destruction and places where people died near the epicenter, the quake’s destructive force left no Valley community unaffected, leaving thousands homeless and touching off reactions ranging from gas main explosions to street floods to a train derailment and even an oil spill.

Water supplies were cut and contaminated in many parts of the Valley after the quake, and reports of illness from drinking water persisted Monday even in those areas previously declared safe, although city water officials maintained that factors other than water--such as food handling--might be to blame.

A Times computer analysis of statistics released Monday by the city Building and Safety Department showed that inspectors declared unsafe 45% of the nearly 17,000 dwellings inspected so far on the Valley floor. Citywide, 40% of 35,000 dwellings inspected were found unsafe.

But the sheer size of the catastrophe--which damaged areas in Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties--began to cause some dissension. Residents in some communities complained that other areas had received speedier attention from the government. For example, while city officials in Glendale and San Fernando were able to persuade federal officials to open FEMA application centers in their cities Monday, some San Fernando Valley residents complained that they were being ignored.

In the northeast Valley, about 30 residents of a quake-damaged Pacoima neighborhood traveled in a caravan to City Councilman Richard Alarcon’s Sylmar office, where they demanded--and got--promises from the councilman’s surprised staff that they would receive deliveries of blankets, food, disposable diapers and medicine. About one-quarter of the more than 2,000 dwellings inspected in Alarcon’s district have been deemed unsafe.

The protesters also charged that city and FEMA officials had passed over Pacoima when they located disaster assistance centers, and called for the establishment of a center there.

Protest organizer Efren Olvera, a local Neighborhood Watch activist, said many of the protesters--who live in quake-damaged units near the intersection of Haddon Avenue and Mercer Street--do not have cars and could not easily reach existing disaster assistance centers in Sunland and San Fernando.

While the protesters asserted that their community was being neglected by disaster officials because the people who live there are among the poorest in the Valley, Alarcon said he and other officials simply didn’t know services were needed in that area.

“The thing is, there are people congregating at many, many sites throughout the district,” Alarcon said. “There are going to be small groups of people who are going to be missed. I would only encourage more and more people to give information.”

Alarcon said that FEMA is considering setting up a disaster assistance center in Pacoima and that he will continue to press for one. In the meantime, his office has made arrangements for Metropolitan Transit Authority buses to transport people to disaster assistance centers.

Francine Oschin, an aide to Councilman Hal Bernson, sees things a little differently. Oschin said Bernson’s district, which includes Chatsworth, Northridge and Granada Hills, deserves special treatment because it suffered some of the most devastating damage, but is not getting its fair share of community services.

More than two-thirds of 6,230 homes inspected so far in the northwest Valley were found unsafe, but Oschin said there is only one FEMA center in Northridge, providing just 900 housing vouchers. She said some areas with very little damage are getting as much attention and services as Northridge, the epicenter of the quake.

Oschin complained that the FEMA services are being distributed “based on equality and not based on urgency.”

But most other Valley council members said their districts are getting a fair share of the services and attention.

Responding to charges that her West Valley district--where half of the more than 5,400 dwellings inspected are considered unsafe--is getting more attention than it deserves, Councilwoman Laura Chick said: “If they think we are getting too much attention then they need to get into a bus and see the devastation we have here. I have no tolerance for this tug of war.”

Terry Hamlin, public affairs officer for FEMA, said the agency is doing the best it can, given the wide swath of destruction created by the earthquake.

“I’ve been working disasters with FEMA since 1981, and this is the quickest response I’ve ever seen. Even though we live in the microwave age, we can’t push a button and make it better overnight. There are going to be a lot of people who are upset and angry because they have been through a very serious situation and it takes some time to help people put their lives back together. We are providing assistance equally. We are honestly doing the best that we can.”

On the eve of the reopening of many schools, two Valley charter schools in the northeast Valley--Fenton Avenue Elementary in Lake View Terrace and Vaughn Street Elementary in Pacoima--opened their classrooms to students Monday for the first time since the quake. Teachers and administrators rallied to address the needs of students traumatized by the disaster.

A week after the temblor struck from beneath a Northridge street corner, killing 57 and leaving thousands homeless, damage estimates are still only preliminary, but estimates reflect the widespread damage caused by the quake.

* In Pacoima, a neighborhood has become like a ghost town after residents packed up and left, fearing another strong jolt would finish the job of knocking down their apartment buildings.

* In Glendale, official damage estimates exceed $20 million as workers have counted more than 500 damaged buildings and declared 33 of them unsafe--including two large parking garages.

* In San Fernando, 63 buildings were destroyed, 22% of the city’s housing stock was damaged and there was about $31 million in damage. The Los Angeles County Superior Court building, which houses 12 courtrooms, suffered extensive damage and will be closed for about a year, said court officials. Much of the San Fernando operations will be relocated to Van Nuys, which is undergoing its own earthquake cleanup. “It honestly looks like someone set a bomb off,” said Superior Court Judge Judith Ashmann, who supervises operations in San Fernando.

* In Burbank, more than 200 earthquake victims are staying overnight at the American Red Cross shelter at McCambridge Park, refugees from at least 20 uninhabitable buildings.

* In Calabasas, city officials estimate $325,000 in damage, including 20 units in a 100-unit condo complex that were left uninhabitable.

* Along Ventura Boulevard--the Valley’s main thoroughfare--from Warner Center to Studio City, shopping malls are closed, restaurants have been gutted by fire, and hundreds of homes have been “red-tagged,” declared uninhabitable, leaving thousands homeless.

As communities wrangled over distribution of earthquake aid, some said they would prefer that the quake had spared them.

“We are not in competition with anyone,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents parts of Sherman Oaks and Studio City. “We would have been happy not to get any damage at all.”

Times staff writers Hugo Martin, John M. Glionna, David Colker and Chip Johnson, and special correspondents Scott Glover, Jill Leovy and Teresa Ann Willis contributed to this story.