ENCINO : Area Spared From Most of Quake’s Wrath

It may be the question that puzzles Encino residents for years to come: Why not us?

When the Northridge quake struck on Jan. 17, houses shook, windows broke and nerves rattled.

But when the dust settled, Encino residents and business owners found that most of the quake damage to their community was cosmetic.

“We were very, very fortunate,” said Jan Sobel, executive director of the Encino Chamber of Commerce.

“We fared very well.”

According to Sobel, none of the chamber’s 625 members suffered damage severe enough to shut their doors for more than a few days.

Some businesses along Ventura Boulevard lost plate glass windows and merchandise in the temblor, Sobel said, but no buildings were condemned.

While the entire 11th District--including Woodland Hills, Encino, Tarzana, and parts of Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks--suffered an estimated $98 million in damage, fewer than half a dozen buildings in Encino were red-tagged by the Department of Building and Safety, according to Glenn Barr, a spokesman for Councilman Marvin Braude.

Impact totals for Encino alone are not available, but Barr said the estimated damage for the Encino buildings deemed unsafe in initial surveys was about $3 million.

Four of those were 70-unit apartment buildings on the 5300 and 5400 blocks of Newcastle Avenue near the northwestern corner of Encino.

“There was a conclave of apartment buildings north of Ventura Boulevard where there was a lot of damage,” Barr said.

“But by and large, there’s not that much damage on other streets in Encino,” he said.

A 509-unit condominium complex on White Oak Avenue, also north of Ventura Boulevard, sustained more than a $1 million in damage, but very little of it was structural.

According to Arthur Rosenberg, president of the Encino Oaks Homeowners Assn., which represents the complex’s 1,200 residents, most of the damage to the 38 units, now closed for repairs, was to the stucco and plaster walls.

“The first floor looks like a bad ride at Disneyland,” Rosenberg said.

“In my place, the walls were split wide open.”

But Rosenberg said the damage looks worse than it is.

“I think we’re the lucky ones,” Rosenberg said.

The quake was less forgiving to two Encino schools--Lanai Road Elementary and Encino Elementary--which remained closed several days longer than most schools in the district.

Encino Elementary suffered structural damage to a two-story building that houses nine classrooms, but the extended closure at Lanai was due to a gas leak.

Both schools have reopened.

Still, Encino residents wonder why their community fared so much better than the surrounding communities of Reseda, Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks--all pummeled severely by the quake.

It’s a question seismologists are asking too.

James Mori, the scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, said there are a number of factors that contribute to the destruction an earthquake causes--from the force of the quake, to the direction the waves travel, to the density of the soil and, finally, to the construction of the buildings.

He said it will take months to understand why some communities fared better than their neighbors.

Even then, some questions may never be answered.

“The damage in earthquakes is never wholesale destruction,” Mori said. “You don’t get a consistent damage pattern. It’s always very irregular.”