Quake Aid for Fillmore, Simi Called Slow : Recovery: FEMA and SBA are criticized by some who say they’ve been waiting months for help. But agency representatives say their efficiency has been praised.

Nearly three months after the magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck a sleeping Southern California, federal emergency aid is reaching most Ventura County victims, disaster officials and aid recipients say.

But some residents of Simi Valley and Fillmore--the Ventura County communities hardest hit by the quake--are still fighting with federal officials for the aid they say they expected long ago.

Simi Valley resident Mike Piper, for example, isn’t sure which was more upsetting--the earthquake that wreaked $60,000 worth of damage on his home, or the following weeks spent wrangling with federal disaster officials, trying to glimpse one penny of the emergency aid they promised him in late January.

“They said, ‘You’ve got to understand, we’ve got 400,000 of these cases,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘ You’ve got to understand, I can’t live in my house.’ ”

But representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency say the efficiency of their response and the friendly attitude of their employees have won them satisfied customers across Southern California.

“We have had people come in here, bringing us candy and cakes,” said Joe Garriga, FEMA’s spokesman in Fillmore. “When we take lunch breaks here, people see us with our IDs and they are very kind to us.”

Officials with the Small Business Administration, which works with FEMA in awarding emergency home and business loans, say they had processed more than half their Ventura County home loan applications and about one-eighth of the county’s business loan applications by April 5.

Diane Brady, a spokeswoman for the SBA, said the agency tries to process home loan applications before dealing with business loans, figuring the home loans are a more immediate priority.

Of the 7,556 home-loan applications filed with the SBA by Ventura County residents, 3,725 were processed and 2,660 loans were approved by April 5. Of the 869 business-loan applications filed with the SBA by county residents, 112 had been processed and 65 loans were approved.

FEMA figures are less precise. Officials say county residents have filed 7,723 applications for FEMA disaster aid since the Jan. 17 quake, and they estimate that most residents either receive their check or an explanation of why they are not eligible within three weeks of their application.

Fillmore resident Irma Eyzaguirre said her grant check took two months to arrive, but she still has few complaints with FEMA.

FEMA officials “were very pleasant,” she said. “They reacted very quickly, I think, to the earthquake and to Fillmore.”

Eyzaguirre’s house suffered only minor damage in the quake. The grant check she received was under $1,000, or less than one-sixth the cost of the total damage. Still, she said, the grants are not meant to repair every crack, just make a house livable again.

“I had no problems,” she said. “Then again, if my house had crumpled to the ground, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to wait that long.”

Not every applicant is satisfied with the wait or the service. Some residents and business owners say federal officials have lost their case files. In some cases, officials have sent key documents from the same file to different cities in different parts of the state, making applications impossible to process. Some complain they were awarded money with so many conditions attached that they could make out better at their local bank.

“From what I have heard from Bill Clinton and (U.S. secretary for Housing and Urban Development) Henry Cisneros, they are taking their kudos far too early,” Piper said. “They are spending a lot of their time patting their backs in front of the public, when those of us in Southern California are hurting, and their system is hurting us.”

Piper’s pain began at 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17.

“The rafters came down through the ceiling like spears,” he said. “The toilet turned upside down. And then, of course, there was all the standard cosmetic damage.”

Since then, his emergency relief case “has been one of those Murphy’s Law type things,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), whose office has worked with Piper, a former Simi Valley city councilman, to get Piper’s paperwork straightened out in the FEMA bureaucracy.

At first, weeks went by without a word from FEMA officials. So Piper started making phone calls on the Small Business Administration loan for which he’d applied.

Turns out, part of his aid request ended up in Pasadena and part landed on a desk in Sacramento. Nothing further could be done until both portions arrived in the same place, officials told him.

Calls from Gallegly’s office and persistent requests from Piper eventually got the Pasadena package up to Sacramento--where an employee opened it only to find it empty. FEMA officials told Piper he had two choices: He could either wait two months or so for them to locate the missing materials, or he could resubmit his application.

Piper put in yet another call to his congressman. “After being harassed by Elton’s office, they suddenly did find my paperwork,” said Piper, who on March 28 received a package from the SBA saying that he’d been approved for a $45,000 loan.

He’s still waiting on the SBA loan for his quake-impacted telephone service business. SBA officials have lost his paperwork twice so far, he say. Officials say they will process his latest, faxed application within the next few weeks.

Local officials say FEMA and SBA must be doing something right. Otherwise, local offices would be flooded with calls from irate quake victims.

As it is, Gallegly’s office and local city halls have heard from some frustrated constituents. But many more, officials say, seem to be quietly dealing with FEMA on their own. In all, officials at Gallegly’s office say, they have dealt with about 245 problem cases from individuals around the county. About 100 of those cases are still pending, they say.

“The main problem I perceive,” said Laura Herron, Simi Valley’s deputy city manager, who fields most of the city’s FEMA problem calls, “is people call up to find out the status of the application, and they’re told it’s pending, and that word pending is very vague.”

Jess and Deana Gonzales know all about pending.

“This is the longest 10 days I’ve ever seen,” Jess Gonzales grumbled nearly 2 1/2 months after his promised FEMA grant was supposed to arrive.

Today, the Gonzaleses and their three toddlers live in a sparsely furnished, rented condominium atop a hill in Fillmore. The stained plaid couch, the children’s beds, the blond wood dining room set----all are donations from the Red Cross. The clothes on their backs were also bought with Red Cross money. Even the $995-per-month rent on the condo is subsidized by FEMA vouchers.

All this because the earthquake rattled their rented house into a red-tagged shambles. And they couldn’t get at most of their clothes, or their furniture, and in fact their nerves were so rattled that Jess crashed his pickup later in the day. The resulting insurance money and the remainder of their savings went into buying what they call “the love boat”--a lemon yellow, 1978 Oldsmobile Royale.

“We’re more than happy with what we’ve gotten,” Jess Gonzales said as the family’s television, the only piece of furniture salvaged from their rented house, played a soap opera in a corner of the family room.

Still, ever since Jess, who is disabled, and Deana, who is on a leave of absence from her cashier’s job, learned they might receive up to $12,000 in grant money, they have counted on the money to help them put their life back together. “I feel kind of cheated,” Jess Gonzales said.

If the Gonzaleses feel cheated, Vernon Devitt, owner of a severely damaged motor home in Fillmore’s El Dorado Mobile Home Estates, is pleasantly surprised.

FEMA and SBA were efficient as far as Devitt is concerned. Within two weeks of his application, they had mailed him grant and loan money he didn’t recall asking for.

“I don’t understand what the inner workings are there,” Devitt said of FEMA, acknowledging that he filled out lots of forms and may actually have requested the grant and loan money.

The grant, the size of which Devitt will not disclose, is sitting in the bank while he decides what to do with it. “I didn’t know what else to do with it,” he said.

Not that Devitt can’t use some extra cash. His mobile home may have to be demolished, in which case the SBA loan money, at just over 3% interest, will come in handy. But he has earthquake insurance, and he expects that to cover many of his expenses.

Devitt has nothing but praise for FEMA. “I was very satisfied with the operation the whole way through,” he said. “What you have to take into consideration is a lot of these (applicants) are going to give bad reports because they’re under a lot of stress.”

Chappy Morris Sr. admits he’s under a certain amount of stress, but lays at least part of the blame on his dealings with the SBA.

“Their regulations and stipulations are making it impossible for us to utilize our money,” said Morris, owner of William L. Morris Chevrolet and Oldsmobile, a downtown Fillmore institution that faces $2.5 million in earthquake damages. Morris’ father started the business in 1929 on the day the stock market crashed, and today Morris and his two sons run the family enterprise.

Morris needs a low-interest emergency loan before he can even think of repairs on the massive scale the business requires. He’s willing to put up everything he owns as collateral, but since he has the entire family on the ownership deed for estate purposes, the SBA says his assets alone are not enough to secure the loan.

“We are not asking for a gift or any subsidy, but a loan, and we are willing to pay interest,” Morris said. “But we do not want to put everything in our family in jeopardy.”

Hank Carrillo, owner of yet another El Dorado park motor home severely damaged in the quake, decided, after waiting weeks to hear on his emergency loan, that the SBA’s terms were so onerous he will go to a local bank instead.

For a loan large enough to cover the $25,000 worth of damage the structure suffered, Carrillo would have to pay more than 7% interest since his income is too high to qualify for the 3% or 4% interest rates some quake victims receive. Furthermore, if he accepts the loan, FEMA says, he will have to use the first $5,000 to pay back the grant the agency awarded him.

Carrillo said he’s now leaning toward a local bank.

“Personally, I was thinking, ‘This is great,’ ” he said. “I didn’t expect anything free. But some of the things they insinuated looked like a gift from the heavens.

“I think if people had been told, ‘We will do the best we can and we will get you the answers when we can,’ then that would have been OK,” he said. “But that’s not the impression I got. It sounded like very low interest rates, and the aid would be coming in right away. And now, immediately has turned out to be weeks and months.”