Doors Close at Fillmore’s Quake Shelter : Aftermath: The remaining victims are relocated to a nearby hotel and given one more week to find other lodging.

Pedro Barajas, his wife and six children packed all their belongings into his minivan Sunday and set out in search of a home.

For the past month, since the Northridge earthquake took both his job and his home, Barajas has spent his nights on a blue canvas cot, staring up at basketball hoops and the electronic scoreboard at the Fillmore Middle School gym.

But Sunday, Red Cross officials closed the doors of the gym, which had served as the county’s largest shelter for earthquake victims. Barajas and 37 other earthquake victims were moved into a nearby hotel and will be given one more week to find other lodging.

“I’m glad to be leaving,” said Barajas, who was the manager of the condemned Fillmore Hotel. “I thought we’d never leave this place.”

The shelter, which had been a temporary home to more than 100 families, housed just seven families last week.

Red Cross officials said it would be cheaper now to move the families into the Best Western hotel. It is also more sanitary, they said.

“Any time you have that many people living together in one place for too long, you risk spreading communicable diseases,” said Sharon Whitman, the shelter’s volunteer nurse.

Most of the remaining quake victims were anxious to leave Sunday, but some have had difficulty finding a permanent home to accommodate their large families.

“It’s been tough finding a landlord who will rent to a big family,” said Juan Carrion, who left the shelter with his wife and three children Sunday afternoon. “We’ve found a place now, but we can’t move in until March.”

*

The Carrions moved to Fillmore seven months ago and lived in a small house near Central Avenue. It received moderate earthquake damage and will be habitable once it is repaired, but Juan’s wife Stella does not want to go back.

“She’s too frightened to go back in,” 15-year-old Maribel Carrion said. “There might be another earthquake, and now the house is not safe.”

Carrion said his family has been counting the days until the month ends and they can move into their new Fillmore home.

While they said they were grateful that the Red Cross set up the shelter after the earthquake, the Carrions said life there has not been very comfortable.

“You can’t use the showers some days, and it’s tough living with all these people around,” Maribel said. “We’re glad we won’t have to share everything anymore.”

Victims at the shelter used portable showers, drank water carried in by two tanker trucks, and shared six outhouses that were set up on an empty dirt lot in front of the gym.

On Sunday, Irene Fulesday spent the morning dishing out the last bowls of chili and preparing care packages for the departing families. Unused food and supplies will be donated to area charities.

“We have all kinds of things, like formula, diapers, bandages, emergency first-aid kits and other things which we’re going to be distributing in Fillmore,” Whitman said. “All of this stuff was donated to us, so we just want to make sure it gets to people who need it.”

*

Fulesday also counted cots and arranged for the Red Cross to take them away to be fumigated and stored for the next disaster.

“It’s been a rough year,” Fulesday said. She and her husband had just returned to their rural Pennsylvania home from the flooding in the Midwest when they were called in to help the earthquake victims.

“We’re glad we had the chance to help people here,” Elmer Fulesday said. “And we look at the bright side of things. When we left home, it was six degrees below zero. When we get back, the snow will be melting.”