Earthquake: The Road To Recovery : Merchants’ Faith in Federal Aid Wanes : Business: Gore’s visit last month raised hopes for quick loans. But there’s been little action since.

It’s been 15 days since Vice President Al Gore made his visit to the Cal State Northridge campus and the flattened Devonshire Mason Plaza, where he hugged and hobnobbed with frazzled merchants.

For Eric Rodriguez, who owns Pacific Aquatics West, a tropical fish store destroyed in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, Gore’s visit gave him hope that, with the federal government behind him, he could revive his 2-year-old business.

He shook hands with Gore and Erskine B. Bowles, who heads the federal Small Business Administration.

“A FEMA guy took my number and I was like, ‘Whoa! These guys mean business,’ ” Rodriguez said. “Then, nothing.

“Hey, the vice president was here shaking hands with everybody and I felt like the government was really working for me,” said Rodriguez as he surveyed his gutted store.

“Now I’m about to become homeless, and I won’t make it back without government help,” he said.

Since Gore returned to Washington, the backslapping around the damaged shopping center has ceased, the handshaking has been replaced with head shaking, and some of the small-business owners most affected by the earthquake are starting to lose confidence in the politician’s promises.

Elie Root has operated a small locksmith shop at the shopping center for the last 15 years. At age 70, Root is perhaps not as idealistic as Rodriguez, 29, and he doesn’t kid himself about what a delay in receiving government aid will mean.

“People won’t come in here because I still have a yellow tag on my wall,” said Root, who secures his shop with boards where windows used to be, locking it all behind a sliding metal gate. “If my business dies, I will die with it,” he said of his shaky financial position. “I can’t hold out another three months. No way.”

Officials at the Small Business Administration field office in Burbank say they are processing $20 million in loans to homeowners and business owners daily. There is no hard and fast rule about how quickly business loans can be reviewed and approved.

Of the more than 14,500 business loan applications received from local businesses damaged or otherwise affected in the quake, little more than 500 have been approved, said Kris Lancaster, an SBA spokesman in Burbank. Overall, there have been more than 100,000 loan applications issued since the earthquake. So far, the agency has distributed a total of $235 million, but less than $25 million to business owners.

Lancaster said the federal agency is approving loans faster in the wake of the Northridge quake than any other disaster in U. S. history, but he could not place a time limit on Rodriguez’s loan or any others.

“It’s not going to take three months,” he said, referring to Root’s estimate. “I can’t give you an exact date for all the applicants, but it won’t take that long.”

Roberta Zaporski, 44, who operates Golden Valley Travel, says she understands how it could take awhile for the wheels of bureaucracy to start churning. She received word Thursday that a loan officer would be assigned to her case within the next 10 days.

“I will just continue to call and drive them out of their minds,” she promised.

Gore spokeswoman Lorraine Voles is quick to assure that everything possible is being done by the vice president’s office and SBA, and she dismisses the notion that visits by Gore or President Clinton have amounted to little more than good public relations.

“I think the vice president was there to offer them hope,” Voles said.

“Both the President and the vice president have been very responsive, but there’s only so much we can do.”