Quake Victims Grow Unruly While Waiting Hours for Aid : Relief: Police are put on alert after reports of fighting at welfare offices. City estimate for Valley building repairs tops $735 million.

In the second week after the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, frustrated and hungry victims converged by the thousands on county welfare offices Wednesday, and crowds grew unruly at times as they waited hours for emergency food stamp vouchers.

Los Angeles police went on temporary alert after receiving several reports of pushing and fighting in the lines, but no one was arrested or injured.

While some incidents were reported, most people in line patiently accepted their long waits as their best chance to get food for families suffering since the 6.6 magnitude quake.

Ramona Barajas, 27, of Pacoima had been waiting in line since 2 a.m., hoping to get food stamps so she could feed her two children a substantial dinner soon. She and her children had been living on soup and milk for days, she said as she stood outside the Panorama City office.

“I hope to buy some chicken and meat with this,” she said. “My children need to eat better than they have been.”

* Elsewhere, the Los Angeles city Building and Safety Department on Wednesday released new figures indicating that the total cost of repairing damaged buildings in the four City Council districts in the San Fernando Valley will add up to more than $735 million. The total included $427.9 million in repair bills alone in Hal Bernson’s 12th District, in the Northridge area.

* The Department of Water and Power announced that parts of the West Valley no longer have to boil water for drinking.

* Attendance remained sporadic across the Los Angeles Unified School District on Wednesday with about 75% of the students in the hardest-hit San Fernando Valley attending school. Of the 1,655 students at Canoga Park High, about 600 were absent. And of the 1,150 students at Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills, about 300 didn’t show up.

* The number of people abandoning their houses and apartments in favor of shelters and tent cities continued to decline, from 14,826 on Monday to an estimated 10,029 Wednesday, showing that people were slowly returning home.

* Aftershocks continued to roll through the Valley, further straining nerves frayed after more than a week of shaking, prompting new efforts to confront the psychological problems associated with the quake as well as the structural ones. Shocks with magnitudes of 3.8, 3.6 and 3.6 respectively rumbled through the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys at 4:28 a.m., at 9:09 a.m., and then again at 8:43 p.m., the Caltech seismology lab in Pasadena reported.

At the Panorama City welfare office alone, more than 2,000 people began showing up before dawn Wednesday, hoping to get a voucher for emergency food stamps before the office closed for the day.

Nearly that many more lined up at another office on South Vermont Avenue. And at least 1,000 lined up before noon at the welfare office on Beverly Boulevard near downtown.

The crowds initially overwhelmed staffers at several county Department of Public Social Services offices where emergency food stamps are being distributed to earthquake victims through Feb 7.

Frustrated applicants at the Panorama City office, many without food or a place to live, waited in a line three blocks long Wednesday.

Working out of a large tent in the parking lot, county social service officials had already processed 600 applications by noon--as many as the entire day Tuesday--and there were still about 1,500 people pushing and shoving in line. Some of the people, desperate for food, had been waiting since 1 a.m.

“The vast majority are current welfare recipients whose situation has been exacerbated by the earthquake,” said Bryce Yokomizo, the social services department’s East Valley District director.

Scuffles broke out in lines at some offices Tuesday, when some applicants mistakenly believed that the emergency program, which began Monday, was about to end.

The one-time-only program is designed to give a one-month food allowance to quake victims as quickly as possible.

“Whether a person comes in today or on Feb. 7, they would get the same amount of food stamps, based on their household circumstances,” said Mary Robertson, an official in the social services department’s food stamp program.

She suggested that applicants wait a day or two before applying if they already have food. “They would have a shorter wait, the closer we get to Feb. 7,” she said. “The lines may be several hours wait now, but they may begin to go down before next week.”

The emergency food stamp program goes into effect only when there is a major disaster, Robertson said. “The rules are set by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the intent is to rapidly process requests,” she said. “We are to issue food stamps on the days they apply.”

Stringent eligibility and verification requirements used in the regular food stamp program are not imposed, Robertson said. For the emergency program, “the USDA only requires verification of identity and residence,” she said.

At the Beverly Boulevard office west of Downtown, eligibility was largely a matter of showing a valid California driver’s license or identification card and making an oral declaration.

Applicants must report their income and cash under penalty of perjury, Robertson said. Eligibility is based on income and cash available, minus earthquake-related expenses such as the cost of spoiled food, home repairs, temporary shelter and medical bills.

A single person is eligible for $112 in food stamps, and a family of four would get $375. The allotment increases about $85 for each additional person, Robertson said.

On Wednesday, the Panorama City center was scheduled to open at 7 a.m., but did not actually open until about 9 a.m., raising the ire of those waiting in line.

“We stood here until 10 before something started moving,” said Susan Bradford, 28, an unemployed mother of six who lives in Van Nuys. She was making her first application for food stamps. Her fiance, Jason Delman, worked at a Robinsons-May department store in Sherman Oaks, which was closed for six months due to last week’s temblor. The couple has had no income and a dwindling supply of food.

“This has been real rough on the kids,” she said. “We don’t have a refrigerator anymore, our food is going bad, and any help we can get at this point would be good because we’re desperate.”

Many of the people in line complained that rampant line-cutting left them at a standstill for hours.

“These people are constantly cutting in line and the police aren’t doing anything about it,” said Susan Stawinski of Sun Valley, pointing to a group of men in front of her. Stawinski had been waiting for food stamps since 4:30 a.m. along with her friend, Mary Junco, and Junco’s two children, Kristin, 2, and Christopher, 6 months. “In six hours we moved about 20 feet,” Stawinski said.

Los Angeles police tried to keep tempers down, stepping in to break up arguments--many involving people who couldn’t understand each other because of language differences. But officers said they could not handle the mass line jumping.

“I try to let the crowd handle them (line-cutters) because we just don’t have enough manpower for that,” said Sgt. Nicholas Wade.

Charo Castaneda, 22, of Panorama City had been living in her car with her two young daughters since the earthquake. All three were living on beans and cheese, she said. She had no husband, no job, and was desperate for food.

“I’m totally dependent on welfare,” she said. “Whatever my friends can give me is all we have had up to now, and we can’t go on like this much longer. A family can’t survive like this.”

On Tuesday, LAPD officers went back to normal shifts for the first time since the Jan. 17 earthquake. Some were quickly summoned to stay on longer shifts after trouble was reported at welfare offices Wednesday.

“It’s mainly crowd control at this point, but we want to be safe,” said Officer Don Cox, a department spokesman.

As the city’s attention gradually shifted from disaster aid to the slow process of cleaning up, the Building and Safety Department released figures showing the total citywide repair cost would be at least $1.34 billion.

The report said that as of Tuesday, 6,600 buildings in the four Valley-based City Council districts had been inspected, with 1,731 being listed as “limited entry,” while another 563 buildings were red-tagged and declared unsafe.

The remaining areas where water should be boiled before drinking also were restructured Wednesday.

The new area is bordered by Roscoe Boulevard on the south; Winnetka and De Soto avenues on the west; the Simi Valley Freeway and the Los Angeles city borders on the north, and the Golden State and San Diego freeways and Woodley Avenue on the east.

Also asked to boil water are residents of the city of San Fernando and the Santa Monica Mountains bordered by Coldwater Canyon on the east, Ventura Boulevard on the north, the city boundary on the west and Sunset Boulevard to the south, excluding the city of Beverly Hills.

DWP officials warn that even after the order to boil water is lifted, residents should flush their home plumbing system by running water in the bathtub or shower for five minutes.

Each faucet inside and outside the house should be run for at least one minute.

At some schools that reopened Wednesday, even though attendance slowly recovered, signs of the quake were all too apparent.

Canoga Park High held physical education classes in the auditorium because the gym area is being used as a Salvation Army emergency site; Parkman students were told to wear warm clothes because about a dozen classrooms still are without heat.

Most schools in the West Valley provided bottled water or told students to bring their own because water remains unsafe to drink.

With all the schools knocked out of service, it might be expected that child-care centers would be flooded with new enrollees.

But several report the reverse.

“We’ve lost some children due to the earthquake,” said Mary Lubran, the owner of the Toddler Learning Center in Canoga Park.

She estimated her student population was down 30%. “Normally, we have 12 in each room, but this week we have seven to nine.”

Reliable figures for the number of people seeking shelter after the quake have been difficult to obtain.

But one thing certain Wednesday was that the trend is downward.

The Salvation Army, which is providing meals and shelter at many tent cities and shelters throughout the Valley, said the total number of people they were caring for had declined from 3,100 on Tuesday to about 2,900 Wednesday.

The Red Cross reported that the numbers at its 32 shelters had declined from 8,088 on Tuesday to 7,142 on Wednesday.

As recovery efforts intensified, increasing attention was being paid to the psychological needs of quake victims.

Staff members of the Mountains Education Program were at Reseda Park to direct recreation activities for children still living there.

There were blindfold games and other nature activities.

“We are a ‘recreation response team’ in these situations,” said Amy Lethbridge, executive director of the program. “It gives the parents and children a break.”

Juan Torres brought his daughter Emily, 1, to the play area in hopes of calming the tiny girl’s nerves. “She is scared. When she is sleeping and hears a sound, she starts shaking,” Torres said. “I hope she plays with kids and forgets.”

Times staff writers John Johnson and Julio Moran contributed to this story.

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