EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Federal Officials Underestimated Scope of Disaster : Senate: Quick response was marred by miscalculations and workers were overwhelmed by needs of non-English speakers, subcommittee is told.

In its speedy response to the Northridge earthquake, the federal government badly underestimated the number of residents left homeless, contributed to long delays at assistance centers and was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of non-English-speaking victims seeking help, officials said Thursday at a Senate subcommittee hearing.

These were among the early lessons gleaned from an initial review of the federal government’s reaction to earthquake-stricken Southern California by the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development and independent agencies.

There was a severe shortage of interpreters of Spanish and less common languages, which became apparent in the first few days after the Jan. 17 earthquake. For example, federal workers were taken aback when confronted with a long line of predominantly Armenian victims outside a Hollywood emergency assistance center.

At Thursday’s hearing, Clinton Administration officials announced plans to hold a daylong retreat to evaluate the performance of 13 federal agencies and 3,600 employees called upon after the quake.

The sheer magnitude of the 6.6 temblor marked uncharted territory for federal disaster officials, who had never been called upon to provide emergency assistance to so many people. Officials said the 26,000 dwellings made uninhabitable by the quake were the equivalent of an entire mid-size American city being wiped out.

To be sure, federal agencies across the board have attracted rave reviews for providing emergency shelter, food and money to people whose lives were disrupted by the quake. Administration officials Henry G. Cisneros, Federico Pena and James Lee Witt were hailed as heroes at Thursday’s Senate hearing for rushing to Los Angeles and directing the government’s response on the ground.

“The good news is that the response to this effort was first-rate,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who chaired the hearing. “We say hats off to FEMA and the other agencies who have toiled 24-hour days to provide aid to the victims and to help return life to normal.”

Federal officials admitted that the first few days after such a massive disaster are destined to be chaotic, regardless of the level of preparedness.

Still, concerns remain that federal disaster officials are undercounting the number who have been left homeless by the earthquake. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she told President Clinton on his visit two days after the temblor that early U.S. government estimates that 2,000 people were knocked out of their homes needed to be multiplied by 10.

Current federal estimates of 26,000 uninhabitable homes in the earthquake area are much too low, Boxer said.

*

Cisneros acknowledged that the initial estimates were far too low, and said they could go higher when Ventura County damage and the impact of aftershocks are factored in.

Boxer contended that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing disaster assistance centers too quickly as the extent of the damage continues to mount along with the number of citizens without shelter. FEMA is considering consolidation of some of its 20 disaster application centers and 14 mobile sites--which Boxer opposes.

“I don’t point the finger of blame at anyone,” Boxer said in an interview. “It’s just that nobody (in Washington) is used to the scope of Los Angeles or that part of the country.”

*

Indeed, the earthquake provided the Clinton Administration with a better understanding of Los Angeles as officials toured devastated areas.

“I don’t think anyone knew how many truly poor people were living in the San Fernando Valley because it was not possible to see it beforehand,” said Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development. “There were tripled-up families living in dilapidated apartment buildings (and) in garages behind buildings. Those garages came down and all of a sudden these people . . . had no place to go.”

Thursday’s hearing revealed a laundry list of lessons that federal officials vowed to study as they begin preparing for the nation’s next major disaster.

As more than 200,000 earthquake victims made their way to disaster centers throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties, they often found daylong waits and widespread confusion. No information was provided outside many of the centers, no telephones were available at some sites and federal officials had no way of communicating between centers.

“I talked to people who psychologically needed emergency help and physically needed it,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is a member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “That is a big thing. We’ve got to get that done.”

Although three out of four applications for disaster assistance were received by telephone, it took four days before the telephone registration centers were fully staffed by 600 people.

“Those delays should not occur,” Feinstein said.

*

Federal officials acknowledged that they were caught off guard by the large numbers of victims who spoke only Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Armenian or other foreign languages.

“It’s difficult to know exactly how to respond because we don’t have a lot of Armenian or Russian speakers in the U.S. government in ordinary emergency responses,” Cisneros said.

“It is a major issue that we will have to think through after this is over.”