City Backs Plan to Ship Quake Rubble to Utah : Recovery: Officials were caught off guard by volume. Rail proposal to expedite cleanup wins preliminary OK.

More than three months after the Northridge earthquake, many streets in the San Fernando Valley still look like scenes from the town of Bedrock--with piles of concrete rubble heaped at curbs waiting for city crews to haul them away.

Cleaning up after January’s 6.8 temblor has proven far more difficult, and vastly more expensive, than anyone figured in the days immediately following the quake.

“The amount of debris created by this earthquake is phenomenal,” said Andres Santamaria, head of the city’s Earthquake Recovery Division.

As a result, Los Angeles residents can expect to wait as long as a month or more for quake debris to be hauled away. City officials estimate that cleanup costs in the city could balloon from $30 million to about $60 million.

To help quicken the pace, the City Council gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a private company to haul debris by rail from Van Nuys to Utah, preserving space in local landfills.

Homeowners, mostly from the Valley, are flooding City Hall with telephone calls, as many as 600 a day, to get rid of the debris. Already, 200,000 tons of junk has been scooped up and trucked off.

And city officials predict they will haul away at least that much more before the end of summer because many residents are only now beginning to make repairs as their insurance checks begin to arrive.

The volume of debris caught the city off guard, Santamaria said. By the beginning of this month, the city had spent most of the money it had allocated for debris removal.

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But there is good news for neighbors who must maneuver their cars through residential streets made narrow by the piles of rubble: More money is on the way.

The budget shortfall caused a two-week slowdown in cleanup earlier this month. The number of contractors hired to haul debris was slashed from 30 to three. The city has since hired 20 more contractors by shifting money from other programs, and there are plans to hire another 20 firms as soon as more federal money arrives.

The temporary cutbacks have delayed the rubble clearing by about a week, officials said.

City cleanup efforts began within days of the Jan. 17 earthquake. Residents were promised free removal of quake-related debris such as wood, bricks and chunks of concrete. The free service saved residents as much as $500 per truckload, the cost of hauling the debris to a landfill.

With that kind of savings, many residents said they are willing to put up with the mess in front of their houses for awhile.

Sherman Oaks resident Heather Bertini was told it may be four weeks until the concrete pile that was once her pool deck is hauled away. Until then, the four-foot-high pile juts out into narrow Greenleaf Street, causing bottlenecks when nearby Sherman Oaks Elementary School lets out.

“I don’t mind waiting,” Bertini said. Shortly after the quake, Bertini hired a contractor to haul away about half as much debris for $250.

Immediately after the quake, most of the debris consisted of bricks from toppled chimneys and smaller household items broken during the shaking, Santamaria said. But as federal disaster agencies and private insurance companies start issuing checks to begin rebuilding, the debris has grown to include large pieces of buildings undergoing repairs.

“Now the big, bulky items are coming forth,” Santamaria said.

City officials originally estimated cleanup efforts would cost about $30 million, most of which would be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By comparison, cleaning up after the 1992 riots cost just under $15 million.

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But over the course of three months, city officials realized their original estimates were too low, said Pat Bonino, who is overseeing disaster aid spending for the city.

By the beginning of April, debris removal alone was estimated to cost almost as much as the total allocated for the cleanup and for demolition of unsafe buildings. The demolition of about 350 such structures has yet to start.

So the city has asked for, and is expected to get, more FEMA money to fund the cleanup.

The checks, Bonino said, are on the way.

“We’ve seen six declared disasters in the last two years,” Bonino said, referring to riots, fires, earthquakes and floods. “This one was so much bigger than all the other ones combined.”