Church Helping Fillmore Rebuild : Quake: Volunteers from Michigan-based group try to fill gaps left by federal aid, assisting in construction and repairs.

Wearing kelly green polo shirts and clutching clipboards, more than a dozen retired, out-of-town volunteers are trudging the streets of Fillmore this week, tallying earthquake damage and helping local residents rebuild their quake-ravaged lives.

The group of about 14 volunteers from the Christian Reform Church based in Grand Rapids, Mich., has descended on Fillmore from across the West and Midwest. Working with local church groups and other volunteer organizations, they hope to assess the needs of local residents and then fill in the gaps that federal disaster aid won’t cover.

“When there is a disaster, at first people are jumping in and helping everyone else, but soon, they have to attend to their own business,” said Henry Smit, a retired physician who volunteers at the Grand Rapids headquarters of the Christian Reform Church. “We try to send people down to organize interfaith groups and help them take ownership of a particular disaster, because they’re going to be faced with it for a long time.”

During the next few months, Christian Reform workers and other volunteers plan to rebuild damaged homes around the city. Christian Reform volunteers will help primarily with construction and other repair work while local volunteers will assist with the renovations and help raise money to supplement grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The nationwide, church-based group has been responding to disasters since 1962. Volunteers receive training from the American Red Cross.

Last week, members of the Christian Reform group began visiting every house in Fillmore and Piru, going door-to-door and asking homeowners whose property was damaged in the quake what still needs to be done and what kind of help they need to do it.

Some, like Fillmore resident Guadalupe Pina, 41, and her mother, Juana, 76, aren’t sure just how much repair work their $2,000 FEMA grant will cover.

On Tuesday, the Pinas outlined the extent of the damage to their Saratoga Street home for Christian Reform volunteers Clancy Lappinga, 73, of Redlands, and Donald Kraker, 70, of Phoenix, Ariz. Floors, doorways, windows, plumbing, the water heater and the air conditioner were damaged.

Even with all the destruction, their house was green-tagged.

“My mother still hasn’t spent the (FEMA) money because she still has to look for someone to come and fix the damage,” Guadalupe Pina said on behalf of her mother, who speaks only Spanish.

Before the earthquake, Guadalupe Pina and five of her six children rented a small home in the back yard of the main house, but the quake left that home so damaged it is uninhabitable. Technically, Kraker said, the volunteers could not help rebuild the house in back because it is not owner-occupied, and they are only able to work on houses that are inhabited by the owners.

Kraker helped Guadalupe Pina fill out a four-page disaster assessment form describing the damage to her mother’s house. Her mother, she said, subsists on Social Security and Guadalupe’s sister, Dolores, 36, and Guadalupe’s daughter Lorena, 18, hold down jobs that contribute to a household income under $6,500 per year.

Kraker said afterward that the disaster volunteers may be able to help the family.

“There’s probably things she’s not showing us right now that could be fixed,” he said. “There’s also the possibility that she would buy the materials with the FEMA money and we would do the work.”

Later in the day, Kraker and Lappinga turned in the Pinas’ survey form, along with the many others they accumulated during hours of walking Fillmore’s tree-lined streets.

The Christian Reform volunteers are due to finish their tallying by April 2 at the latest. Next, local volunteers will wade through the many surveys, sorting residents’ forms according to type and severity of need. Then, as many communities eventually do, they may ask the Christian Reform volunteers to come back and help with the actual home rebuilding. Until this latest disaster in Fillmore, John and Bertha Vis of Grand Rapids have usually arrived for the construction phase of the volunteer effort. They drywalled in Des Moines, Iowa, last September following the epic Midwestern floods. A year ago January, in Homestead, Fla., John Vis, 63, repaired roofs of homes damaged by Hurricane Andrew, and Bertha Vis, 63, painted the homes’ interiors.

Tuesday, they went door-to-door in Fillmore, filling out survey forms so later volunteers would know whom to help and what to bring.

Some residents, however, insisted they really didn’t need any aid at all.

“FEMA money is more or less for poor people who want to cry on somebody else’s shoulder,” said Robert Eckert, 75, a retired janitor whose home, yellow-tagged by structural engineers, needs a new foundation, a new chimney and a new fireplace. “I’ll make it on my own. It takes guts, but you’ve got to have that in life.”

Despite the Vises’ persistent offers to connect him with a FEMA office, Eckert insisted federal help would be more trouble than it was worth. “I went up there and I got three estimates and they wanted 10 and I said, ‘Forget it!’ ” he said. “It’s just all a pain in the butt.”

Eckert said he will pay the contractor--who has already begun work on the foundation--out of income from his Social Security checks and some rental properties he owns, and from his savings. If necessary, he said, he’ll apply for a loan from Bank of America.

“Well, you might want to look at this,” John Vis finally said, handing Eckert a sheet of paper with a telephone number for the California Natural Disaster Assistance Program, which awards low-interest, deferred loans to property owners.

“Hmm, I never heard of this,” Eckert said, his face brightening as he studied the sheet of paper.

“You know,” he said with a smile, “I may give them a call.”