HERE, THE CRY FOR HELP IS EVEN MORE DESPARATE : The Earthquake Delivered a Blow to People in the City’s Core, Many of Whom Were Struggling to Survive Even Before the Shaking Started. Now There Are New Homeless--and New Problems.

Like fragile buildings yet to be retrofitted, fragile lives in Central Los Angeles have been further weakened by the Northridge temblor. And like those buildings, the question for the future is how long it will take to rebuild those lives.

Structural damage in the area, which turned out to be much more extensive than reported in the hours immediately after the earthquake, has generated increasing anger among those who believe that the relatively slow response by disaster relief officials was yet another slap in the face to historically underserved neighborhoods.

There is also the psychological toll from aftershocks, which have frayed nerves and reduced tolerance for living in marginally safe housing and have left hundreds uncertain of when they will be able to move into a new home.

But for the most part, the long-term questions of when widespread relief will come to Central L.A. have taken a back seat to the more pressing concern of day-to-day survival.

“I cannot even say what we will do tomorrow, so I cannot say what will happen in six months,” said Gerardo Lopez, whose family moved in with his in-laws after they were forced out of their damaged Baldwin Village apartment building.

With Central L.A. continuing to assess the damage inflicted by the city’s most severe earthquake in modern history, residents, merchants, community leaders and elected officials brace themselves for what may seem to be interminable problems in the area.

“There appears to be a long road ahead of us for sorting out who’s in need of what and making sure we can get to all of the people who need help,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles.

“Things moved slowly down here (in Crenshaw and South Los Angeles) at first, but I believe that we will see more help arriving,” he said.

Immediately after the earthquake, there was little apparent damage in Central Los Angeles. Many of the problems were internal, with hairline cracks and holes in some walls, or fallen drywall. Completely devastated structures were few--two in the Crenshaw area just north of Adams Boulevard, a church on the 4100 block of Figueroa Street.

But each day, more calls from residents in South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles, Echo Park, Pico-Union and Mid-Wilshire poured into city offices and Red Cross hot lines with complaints. And the damage toll rose.

As of Thursday/Friday, the city Department of Building and Safety reported that 1,800 buildings in Central Los Angeles sustained damage totaling more than $41 million. The damage ranged from minimal to severe.

Over the next few months, building owners and contractors will assess whether the structures deemed unsafe can be salvaged. In the meantime, thousands of residents are fighting for space in shelters already overtaxed by burgeoning homelessness, or doubling up with friends and relatives.

“Every bit of space that we have is taken up with a cot. It’s almost like people are sleeping elbow to elbow,” said Joseph J. Seraki, who briefly managed a Red Cross shelter at Manual Arts High School before returning to his home in Northern California.

Rick Caissie, the new manager of the shelter, said he expects it to remain open until mid-February or until all families have received housing vouchers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The biggest problem right now is accommodations,” Caissie said.

Quick tempers also have been a problem. Tension at the Manual Arts shelter erupted soon after the earthquake rocked the area early on Jan. 17. People routinely bicker over the number of donated clothes or toys each family has or how much assistance one group has received over another.

“You have to expect that some people may be on edge,” Seraki said. “They’ve lost their homes, they have no place to go, they don’t know their next step.

“Every day, we turn around and another family is coming in for help, and that makes others worry if they’ll still get help,” he said.

Caissie said the shelter has had a steady flow of newly homeless families, keeping the shelter’s average occupancy at nearly 300 per night.

As more red and yellow building inspection tags go up on dwellings, deeming them unsafe or for limited entry only, more families end up in shelters or in nearby parks or empty lots.

“This will exacerbate the homeless problem because it will destabilize families on the brink,” said Ridley-Thomas, who helped arrange for a shelter to be opened in Jim Gilliam Park’s gymnasium for families who had been sleeping outside in the park.

“Even with resources, this makes life more tenuous,” Ridley-Thomas said.

Many families moved in with friends, neighbors and other family members. Others split up, with men guarding the homes against thieves.

Lopez moved his wife and three children in with his in-laws while he slept outside the family’s apartment building at 4055 Stevely Ave. He said he had hoped the building’s manager would return to tell him and the seven other families who lived there whether they would get back some of their rent or security deposit.

After four fitful nights in his car with little assistance and no sign of the landlord, Lopez joined his family. With no savings, Lopez said he doesn’t know how long they will have to stay with relatives.

“There is nothing we can do, but wait. Wait and see,” he said.

Salvador Segura, another tenant in the building, said he, his three siblings and his mother will have to continue sleeping in neighboring Jim Gilliam Park, or the newly opened Red Cross shelter, while they look for another apartment.

Three days after the temblor, city inspectors condemned the building. The next day, however, different inspectors changed the sign to condemn only about half a dozen of the 37 apartments in the complex where ceilings have fallen and cracks have severed stairs and guardrails.

With their money gone at the start of the month to pay rent and other bills, Segura, 20, said he and his family will be on the street indefinitely--maybe weeks, maybe months--until they save enough money to find another apartment or get assistance from FEMA.

“I went to FEMA on Crenshaw (Boulevard) and they gave me an appointment for Feb. 2, and I don’t know if that even means that we can get help to find another place,” Segura said. “But we can’t go back to living in (the Stevely Avenue apartment). It’s too unsafe.”

At the shelter at Manual Arts High, LaShanna Green also wondered about the future.

“If my building is condemned I won’t have nowhere to live. I’ll just have to go from shelter to shelter,” said Green, who went to the shelter with her boyfriend and two of her six children after the quake. “I just want somewhere to live for me and my kids.”

“It’s not no good no more,” Green said, rocking her 5-month-old daughter Javiera as she talked about her apartment building on the 4500 block of Santa Rosalia Drive. Building inspectors put a green tag on the building, indicating that it is safe for occupancy. But that wasn’t enough to convince Green.

“I’ve got to think about my kids,” said Green, whose four other children are living with her boyfriend’s mother. “If something else happened, another quake, well, I just don’t know. . . .”

While such fears were common at the shelters and in the parks, there were also common complaints. Many said it has taken too long for assistance to arrive in many encampments around Central Los Angeles. Calls to Southern California Gas Co. or the Red Cross asking for assistance immediately after the quake were turned away because they were not in the epicenter, some complained.

At the insistence of City Council members Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters, federal Disaster Assistance Centers were opened in the Crenshaw district and in South-Central several days after the temblor. Roberto Lovato, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, said his agency and officials from City Councilman Mike Hernandez’s office had to fight to get shelters and a disaster application center opened in Pico-Union.

“We almost had to convince people that there was actual damage here,” Lovato said.

And when help did arrive, Lovato said, there were few people who knew enough Spanish to translate for the neighborhood’s predominantly Latino population.

“To me, that points to a larger issue that our emergency systems are not set up to meet the needs of our diverse population,” Lovato said.

In addition, he said, some illegal immigrant families are wary of seeking federal aid for fear that they will be caught by immigration officials. “There is a need down here that has to be recognized and dealt with,” Lovato said.

In the three days after the earthquake, the only help provided to the approximately 1,000 people in and around Pico-Union who were left homeless by the disaster was from community-based organizations and Hernandez’s office, Lovato said.

One small Red Cross shelter for about 100 people opened three days after the quake. Two others opened two days later, including one at Bronson High School for displaced families from Echo Park, Hollywood and Pico-Union.

Three days after the quake, representatives from Ridley-Thomas’ office and volunteers from Community Youth & Gang Services handed out donated pizzas at Jim Gilliam Park, the first meals brought to the more than 30 families. The next day, a Red Cross shelter opened at the park’s gymnasium.

At Manual Arts High, more than 300 families moved into the gymnasium of the Lady Toilers girls’ basketball team.

Waleska Lopez, 14, her parents and three siblings went to the shelter after officials told them and 10 other families to move out of their apartment building at 3800 Vermont Ave. Because the building was state-run, all of the families are to be placed in other state-run buildings.

Maria Mendoza was also lucky. After the building at 2334 Crenshaw Blvd. where she and nearly a dozen other families lived sustained heavy damage in the quake, her landlord moved all the tenants into a neighboring building.

However, landlords are not required by law to provide housing for tenants if the structures are condemned, said Romerol Malveaux of the city’s Housing Department. If a building is safe enough to move into despite some earthquake damage, a landlord is required to fix it, she added.

In condemned buildings, landlords must return a tenant’s rent and security deposit within 21 days, Malveaux said.

For homeowners such as Pam Lewis of South Los Angeles, there appears to be nothing that will help fix the damage to her home on West 49th Street. Although the damage may run only about $5,000, Lewis said she cannot afford to repay a federal loan to cover those repairs. And the earthquake insurance Lewis took out on her home covers damage only above a $15,000 deductible, she said.

“So I’m stuck,” Lewis said as she stood in a food distribution line at the African-American Unity Center on 52nd Street. “Even with insurance, I have problems.”

About one in four California homeowners has earthquake insurance. Those who have homeowner’s insurance but no earthquake insurance must either seek federal assistance or try for a bank loan, said Bill Schultz, a spokesman for the state Department of Insurance.

Business owners, some with no insurance coverage and uncertain about receiving federal assistance, have also been crying out for assistance and coping the best they can.

In the parking lot of the main headquarters of Family Savings Bank on Crenshaw Boulevard, bank officials worked from cellular phones and on long folding tables redirecting customers to other offices. The earthquake triggered the building’s sprinkler system, which dumped more than a ton of water throughout the five-story building.

Cindy Yoshida, branch administrator for Family Savings Bank, said the main office will operate out of a trailer for the next several months while the building is being repaired.

Merchants are also expected to be affected by traffic spilling off the Santa Monica Freeway headed toward Downtown. Merchants and residents along Adams and Jefferson boulevards have been told to brace themselves for a gridlock that is not expected to let up during the freeway repair project, which will take at least six months, city traffic officials said.

The quake may also mean a heavier load of traffic from the Crenshaw area into Downtown along Olympic, Washington, Adams and Jefferson boulevards.

“There’s no denying that this will impact the local environment. These streets are already used pretty much already,” said James E. Moore, an Urban & Regional Planning professor at USC. “The extra traffic coming off the freeway will only add more inconvenience.”

Moore said he was uncertain whether the additional traffic will help merchants’ businesses, since most of it will occur during rush hour and many vehicles may not want to stop.

He added that city traffic officials could handle the overflow of diverted traffic with the same method used in the 1984 Olympics, when special lanes were created along major thoroughfares. “In a city this large, there’s no way to avoid this problem, but there are systematic ways of dealing with it,” he said.