EARTHQUAKE: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Community Fears Losing Its Torn Heart : Schools: Van Gogh Street Elementary was the pride of the neighborhood. Now it may be closed permanently because of earthquake damage.

It wasn’t the hilly, tree-lined streets, the handsome two-story homes, or even the proximity to vast parkland that attracted William and Laura Adler to their quiet Granada Hills neighborhood five years ago.

They moved to the area so their children could attend Van Gogh Street Elementary School, a quiet, resource-rich campus that some people consider the best-kept secret in the San Fernando Valley.

Then the Northridge quake tore open hundreds of crisscrossing cracks across the playground and through the main hallway of the campus, putting the future of the school and the tightknit community in jeopardy. Fearing that the ground under the school has become unstable after the Jan. 17 quake, the Los Angeles Unified School District is moving the students to nearby Frost Middle School until geological studies are completed that will determine whether Van Gogh will ever be reopened.

“I’d rather lose our house than the school,” William Adler said. “If we’d lost our house, we could have rebuilt it. This is out of our control.”

Like many parents with young children, the Adlers moved to the secluded neighborhood--nestled in Bee Canyon near 714-acre O’Melveny Park at the northern edge of the Valley--so their two daughters could attend Van Gogh.

“We heard about it through friends and neighbors,” William Adler said. “We picked that school and moved across the street from it.”

With its active parent involvement and strong teacher commitment, the 370-student school is the pride of the neighborhood. Parents boast when they talk about it, likening it to a private school in the public school system--the shining star of the district. Principal Maureen Diekmann said the school consistently ranks in the top five in the Valley on the state Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.

What makes the recent quake damage at Van Gogh more significant is that similar cracks in the ground opened up after the 1971 Sylmar quake. A report by the California Division of Mines and Geology suggested that the ground displacement then might have been caused by liquefaction.

Liquefaction occurs in areas of loosely packed, fine-grain soil that become saturated by ground water in an earthquake. Lubricated by the water and hit with shock waves, the soil loses its cohesion, and turns into a fluid mass.

After the Northridge quake, the Los Angeles Unified School District contracted with two private geotechnical engineering consulting firms to determine what caused the damage at Van Gogh. Law/Crandall Inc. of Los Angeles, after a preliminary examination of the ground cracking and a review of reports from the 1971 quake, said that liquefaction did not occur.

But Jerry Kovacs and Associates Inc. of Studio City concluded that the school “may not be safe during an earthquake.”

The experts are just beginning fuller investigations of the site, which will include mapping the cracks and boring for soil samples and water levels--all important indicators of the soil’s propensity to liquefy.

Doug Brown, director of facilities for the district, said that if the new studies produce the same results as the preliminary investigations, he will hire another firm for a third opinion.

“If there is no common ground, I have to get another study,” Brown said. “My same standard applies, I won’t open it if I wouldn’t put my children and grandchildren there.”

Experts disagree about the dangers of liquefaction, and whether it is wise to occupy buildings on property where it has occurred in past earthquakes. Some say not enough is known about the seismic hazard to predict its precise effect.

In the 1971 Sylmar quake, liquefaction damaged the Lower San Fernando Dam, and in 1989, the Marina District of San Francisco was devastated in the Loma Prieta earthquake when its solid foundations became fluid. The seismic hazard was first documented in Niagata, Japan, in 1964, where it caused buildings to sink several feet into the ground.

But Ronald Scott, professor of engineering at Caltech, said finding evidence that liquefaction occurred at a site during an earthquake is not necessarily cause for alarm.

“I’ve looked at a lot of buildings in sites that liquefied very thoroughly,” Scott said. “What happens to buildings is extensive damage that is not necessarily life-threatening.”

Scott said homes located on soil that liquefied in a previous earthquake are at risk of damage in another one, but “not likely to be sucked into the soil.”

But Edward F. Hill, a geotechnical engineer for Jerry Kovacs and Associates, said liquefaction can be very hazardous.

“A house is a different animal than a school building,” Hill said. “Houses will flex, but school buildings can crack and break.”

Hill said the final study will take six to eight weeks.

“We don’t know what we’ve got up there yet,” said Hill. “We’re just getting started.”

Meanwhile, as neighborhood residents wait for the final analysis, they agonize about what impact that closing the school would have on their neighborhood, their children and their homes.

Jim and Sherri Ramirez, who moved to the community from North Hills so their second-grade daughter could attend Van Gogh, said the prospect of the school closing its doors is frightening.

“We moved here specifically because of the school,” Jim Ramirez said. “I don’t know what I’d do if it closed. I’d be extremely upset.”

Ramirez added that a decision to close the school might also have long-term, negative repercussions in the neighborhood.

“If you take the school out of our area, you lessen the value of where we live,” Ramirez said. “And having the stigma of a school abandoned for geological problems. Who’s going to want to move into that area?”

Julia Jones, a real estate broker who has been selling properties in the area for 23 years, said the school is a powerful magnet for parents with young children.

“I don’t think (closure) would destroy the community,” Jones said. “But it would hurt because that school is a very important part of the neighborhood.”

Other parents worry about the potential impact on their children.

“It would be traumatizing,” said Debi Chesler, whose daughter attends fourth grade at Van Gogh. Chesler said she felt secure knowing that her daughter, who is diabetic, attended a small school where teachers and administrators knew of her condition. “Having her transferred to a larger school would be traumatic for all of us,” she said.

For many residents, the possibility that liquefaction--something most people know little about--may have occurred in their neighborhood is equally unsettling.

“If they are saying the ground at the school is unstable, what does that say for our homes?” said Peggie Needleman, who has an 8-year-old daughter at the school. “If you went to buy a house, are you really gonna buy a house across from the school? I don’t think so.”

Because so many factors--including proximity to the epicenter, soil compaction, ground-water levels and underlying fault lines--determine the damage caused by an earthquake, some experts say predicting whether one area will fare better than another is a shaky science at best.

“As far as the Southern California region is concerned, the hazards are the same everywhere,” said Prof. Scott of Caltech.

“Of course, you’d be better off in Wisconsin.”