Earthquake Provides An Unwelcome Reminder : Fillmore: Loud 3.6-magnitude temblor rattles the nerves of residents. Epicenter is situated five miles northwest of city.

Mental health counselor Robert Ortiz had just finished persuading a Fillmore man to talk about his fear of earthquakes when the jolt came: a magnitude-3.6 quake that shook Fillmore Friday morning and rattled the nerves of a city still recovering from the Jan. 17 disaster.

Friday’s quake, with its epicenter five miles northwest of Fillmore, did little damage to the city, which had already sustained $250 million in losses from the Northridge quake.

“It looks like the big one we had shook down everything we had to shake down,” Fire Chief Pat Askren said.

Askren said a cursory check of public buildings, bridges and roadways Friday revealed no signs of injuries or substantial damage.

Friday’s quake, which seismologists said was centered too far from Northridge to be considered an aftershock, hit at 10:53 a.m. with a rumble or cracking noise, described by some residents as a sonic boom. Then came a jolt upward, strong enough to snap an awning back and forth on Central Avenue and lift one teacher from her chair.

Jim Mori, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, said the sound can occur when the ground begins to shake at the same frequency as sound waves, or when buildings begin to rumble. Scientists have not yet determined which fault was connected to Friday’s earthquake, Mori said.

A second, smaller quake, unrelated to the one in Fillmore, also struck Southern California Friday in San Bernardino County, authorities said. That jolt, measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale, was an aftershock to Wednesday’s powerful 4.8-magnitude quake at Lake Arrowhead.

The Fillmore quake lasted about 10 seconds, but residents remained shaken hours later.

“Right now, the whole city is jittery,” said Fillmore City Councilman Scott Lee. “People who have been in a major earthquake, we feel like we’re in an earthquake all the time.”

Lee’s wife, Jan, was in her San Cayetano Elementary School classroom when the shaking began. “I have quite a few students who have homes that came down in the big earthquake, so any time the ground moves they get real nervous,” said Lee, who teaches first and second grade.

“I had several children in tears, others had stomachaches, headaches. I had a couple of kids clinging to my legs.”

It was especially hard, she said, since she had her own lingering anxieties about the January quake. “Our nerves are as jumpy as the students’,” she said. “I was glad to come home this afternoon.”

Crisis counselors Ortiz and Norm Levine had the same reaction as they stood outside a Fillmore home, trying to talk to a man about the phantom earthquake he keeps sensing.

“How can you give this guy reassurance when, bang , here comes another one?” said Ortiz, part of an outreach team from Ventura County Mental Health Services.

“You wouldn’t want to cower down in a fetal position,” Levine added: “though I thought about it.”

The random nature of earthquakes only makes anxiety worse, said Beatriz Anderman, a counselor working with Catholic Charities at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Fillmore.

“Every earthquake that we have is only a reinforcement of the behavior we had before,” she said. “You never know when it’s coming. So you keep waiting and waiting.”

After the Northridge disaster, which hit Fillmore harder than any other Ventura County community, the Catholic Charities counselors saw 800 people for psychological problems. That quake was particularly hard for children because it struck before dawn, leaving them in the dark and unprepared, she said.

The January quake left a wake of devastation in Fillmore, destroying homes and businesses. Some stores still operate out of tents and the city reservoir may have to be closed.

City engineer Bert Rapp was busy inspecting a condemned car dealership when Friday’s quake struck. “It sounded like a truck ran into the building,” he said. “We all looked at each other and said, ‘What was that?’ But there was no place to go.”