EARTHQUAKE / The Long Road Back : First Lady Tours Quake Devastation : Leaders: Extent of damage is amazing, she says. Mrs. Clinton also takes part in crisis counseling session at elementary school.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton got a firsthand look Thursday at Los Angeles earthquake damage and said she was stunned by what she saw.

“I am amazed at the damage that I’m seeing on this one street,” the First Lady said after touring a badly damaged Hollywood neighborhood.

“The intensity of the experience, I think, can’t even be described,” she said. “I’m also very impressed by the spirit of the people and the cooperation between all the different levels of government.”

Mrs. Clinton, whose trip to Los Angeles was planned before the Jan. 17 quake, made her first stop at Hyde Park Boulevard Elementary School, where she participated in a quake crisis counseling session with a small group of children and teachers.

“This is an experience they keep living over and over again,” she said after meeting with students at the South-Central Los Angeles campus for about half an hour.

“At least they’re talking about it, they’re writing about it,” she said.

After a natural disaster, schools must reopen as soon as possible “to give them some sense of security,” the First Lady said. “Getting back to their usual routines is very significant for students.”

Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as she toured a residential neighborhood in Hollywood where bungalows built about 80 years ago were severely damaged in the magnitude 6.6 quake.

The houses were pushed off their foundations, porches collapsed and water and gas service had not been restored. The area has since suffered more damage from the aftershocks that continue to rumble through the Los Angeles area.

Raymond O’Keefe, 53, and his 78-year-old mother-in-law told Clinton how they were driven out of their adjacent homes in the 6000 block of Selma Avenue by the quake. They have been camping in the back yard.

“Everybody got out all right,” Raymond O’Keefe said. “I never thought I’d have to use all (my) camping experience.”

O’Keefe told Clinton that he, his wife and his mother-in-law have not been able to salvage their furniture because the quake twisted the two houses and jammed all the doors.

After the earthquake, he said, the family left his house through a dining room window.

Mrs. Clinton told reporters she chose not to visit the hard-hit San Fernando Valley, where the quake was centered, because “I don’t think I have to go to every place to see what is happening.”

But aides conceded that her stops in South-Central and Hollywood were designed to defuse criticism that her husband’s visit last week focused attention exclusively on the Valley.

City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who represents the Hollywood area, said 5,000 people in that community were left homeless by the quake.

“Because of the devastation in the San Fernando Valley, a lot of people have not noticed what’s going on here,” Goldberg said.

The First Lady was honored Thursday night at an entertainment industry gala at the Universal Amphitheatre in the Valley to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles.

She and Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg received the seventh Commitment to Life awards presented by APLA to recognize those who work in the fight against the disease.

The First Lady was cited for her health care reform proposals, which APLA executives have said are sensitive to AIDS issues.