U.S. Officials Dissect Quake Response

Federal officials who gathered here Monday to discuss their effort to help Southern California recover from the Northridge earthquake praised themselves for responding rapidly and cohesively but stressed the need to improve on nearly every front.

Underlying their discussion was anxiety that the next challenge may be far tougher.

“This was a great experience,” William E. Clark of the Department of Health and Human Services said of the relief program. “But the Big One scares the bejesus out of us.” He called the Jan. 17 temblor “not the Big One but the big warning.”

For many of those who met for 3 1/2 hours in a hotel ballroom here, the devastating quake in a dense urban area represented high-pressure, on-the-job training less than a year after they took office.

One participant called the effort “the civil equivalent of Operation Desert Storm”--without the benefit of six months of preparation.

Federal, state and local officials and private relief agencies received high marks overall from James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and from Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, Transportation Secretary Federico F. Pena and other leaders of the federal response. “We established a new standard of performance,” Pena said.

But others emphasized that the quake would have taken a far greater toll had it not occurred before dawn on a Monday morning, and on a holiday at that. And several speakers noted that a much more severe quake--with projections of tens of thousands injured and up to $80 billion in damage--could loom ahead.

“We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go to be ready,” said Witt, who quarterbacked the federal relief effort and was host of Monday’s symposium.

The participants said there is an urgent need for improved preparedness, training, coordination, communication, public education, and construction and safety measures to limit future injuries and damage.

Among the missteps that federal officials vowed to avoid in future calamities:

* Disaster assistance centers--some of which opened only four days after the Northridge earthquake--were initially plagued by long lines, slow processing, lack of bilingual staff and confusion over emergency housing programs provided by various federal agencies.

* An early rash of false and inflated claims stemming from suspension of standard screening procedures in an emergency food stamp program that parceled out $68 million.

* Repair costs for freeways damaged by the Jan. 17 temblor were overestimated--by $500 million--by California transportation officials.

Witt and Cisneros acknowledged that there was confusion about eligibility requirements for FEMA’s short-term housing grants and HUD’s 18-month rental vouchers for low-income victims. Cisneros said he will make disaster housing assistance available again but with some modifications.

Oleta G. Fitzgerald, executive assistant to Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, said a recent workshop held to assess problems with the emergency food stamp program determined that advanced planning with states is necessary to prevent fraud and that information about eligibility criteria and penalties for fraud should be circulated through the news media.

Officials agreed that efforts should be intensified to construct and retrofit buildings to minimize damage in the future. They also called for establishment of a stable, long-term funding source to pay for disaster relief.