CANOGA PARK : Classes to Resume at Recreation Center

The mobile restaurant that supplied food for American Red Cross volunteers who worked at the Winnetka Recreation Center helping Northridge earthquake victims made its final stop last week.

The last portable toilet was hauled away earlier this week.

Now, guitar strumming, piano playing and tap dancing will return to the center, 8401 Winnetka Ave., which had served as a Disaster Assistance Center since the Jan. 17 temblor rocked Los Angeles.

On Monday, area residents received in the mail a spring class schedule and registration guide.

“We’re letting people know that we’re here and we’re trying to get back to full swing,” said Ed Laakso, center manager.

The Winnetka center was the last in the San Fernando Valley to offer Red Cross assistance. It opened in February after the Federal Emergency Management Agency left the center and the Red Cross contracted with the city of Los Angeles to move its headquarters there from a tent near Northridge Mall.

For a month after the quake, a tent city took up more than half of the center’s 15-acre athletic field. Fax machines, a separate phone system and even a rooftop satellite dish transformed much of the center into a high-technology relief site.

Laakso canceled all classes, sports clinics and, for a time, the senior citizens program to accommodate the various relief agencies.

“We were more or less here to assist (the agencies) in any way we could,” Laakso said.

The basketball league, under way before the quake hit, was moved to Lanark Recreation Center in Canoga Park.

The one program that continued at the center was the three-day-a-week preschool. Laakso thought it was important not to disrupt the routine for the children, who range in age from 3 1/2 to 5.

Even though Laakso posted signs in English and Spanish stating that the Red Cross had moved out, he is still fielding questions from people coming to the center in search of help.

But not everybody coming in is checking on their FEMA loan.

Three to four hundred residents participate in the center’s programs each week, and a few are beginning to stop by and register for classes.

“We’re hoping that the people will come back,” Laakso said.

“It’s just going to take a little time.”