EARTHQUAKE: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Appetite for Construction : 2 Neighbors Enjoy Noisy Spectacle of Freeway Repair Work

Some neighbors might complain about living with the 24-hour beeping and banging, the dust, the high-intensity lights and the rumbles and vibrations from monstrous trucks hauling tons of quake rubble as workers labor nonstop to repair the shattered Simi Valley Freeway.

Not Jerry and Fritz.

“It’s darned interesting,” Jerry says.

Jerry Bussing, 66, and Fritz Yonkers, 65--”That’s Fritz like the cat, Yonkers like New York”--act these days like two small boys with a big sandbox in their back yard. They spend about four or five hours each day keeping tabs on the heavy equipment.

The two retired neighbors, who live on Jonfin Street, a cul-de-sac that backs up to the collapsed section of the freeway, are the self-proclaimed “sidewalk supervisors” of the round-the-clock project to demolish and rebuild two overpasses that collapsed near the Hayvenhurst Avenue exit in Granada Hills during the Jan. 17 Northridge quake.

They’ve watched the trucks and cranes go by. They’ve learned the workers’ routines, as well as a thing or two about “rebar,” trac loaders and 32-wheelers. And, they’ve acquired a taste for breakfast burritos, served hot off the catering truck every day at 7:20 a.m.

Talk about high entertainment value. “It’s like a three-ring circus out there,” Bussing said Thursday, fresh from a nap and toting a mug of apple juice as he assumed his perch atop a pile of bricks stacked against the sound wall that separates Yonkers’ back yard from the freeway.

It sure beats cleaning out the garage or watching Phil and Oprah, they say.

And it’s educational.

“There’s a hole ram right there,” Bussing explained, pointing to a piece of heavy equipment with a long, cylindrical attachment that brought to mind a giant dentist’s drill. “It’s got 7,500 pounds of punch. They use it to bust up concrete. It’s very maneuverable. Last week, they had five of them suckers out there.”

Never mind that life now is filled with small inconveniences. The short jaunt to the supermarket on the other side of the fallen section of the erstwhile Simi Valley Freeway now takes an extra five to 10 minutes. A couple of nights, Yonkers had to flee to his daughter’s house in Santa Clarita to catch some sleep.

Sometimes the show is worth the inconvenience.

On Wednesday night, the workers brought out the torches to cut the 15-ton steel I-beams.

Now, that’s entertainment.

“When they started burning, sparks were flying all over,” Bussing said. Added Yonkers, “It was like the Fourth of July.”

But then, it already takes a high tolerance for noise to live “in the shade of a freeway,” as singer Jackson Browne once phrased it. And the neighborhood near the intersection of Ludlow Street and Gothic Avenue, which predates the freeway, is as close as anyone can get to “the 118” without having to merge.

Still, construction noise is much more jarring than the hum of tires rolling over concrete at 65 m.p.h. Some of their neighbors--particularly residents of Ludlow Street who awoke Jan. 17 to find a freeway overpass sitting inches from their front yards--have found temporary quarters elsewhere, returning to the neighborhood occasionally to check their houses.

Those who stayed are those who could make their peace with the round-the-clock spectacle and din at their doorsteps.

“You get used to the noise,” Bussing said. He has lived in the neighborhood since 1968 and raised five children there. “When you have five kids in the family, this isn’t noisy,” he said. “It has been a wonderful place to live.”

Deanda Giovanelli, 18, spent half her childhood with her bedroom window at the foot of the freeway. She said she has trouble sleeping without the lullaby of traffic whizzing by.

Brother Bill, 17, is less thrilled by the construction. “It’s one constant aftershock,” he said. “You can’t drive through there, it’s all muddy, and with all that light I can’t sleep at night.”

But his sister said the construction noise helps her sleep. Until the all-out repair push began, she said, “It was too quiet” in the hours after the quake shut the freeway. “I could hear every movement in the house, every creak. I slept with the TV on.”

The demolition began within 48 hours of the Jan. 17 quake. This weekend, construction of the new freeway bridge begins.

“I’m Deanda the freeway girl,” she said. “At first you say, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be all night long.’ Then you get used to it. A lot of people complain, but you can’t just leave a freeway lying there.”