L.A. Adds More Crews to Remove Quake Debris

After a slow start to the city’s earthquake cleanup program, Los Angeles city officials said Tuesday they have speeded up the debris removal effort by more than doubling the number of work crews since last week.

This brings the number of crews dealing with the nation’s most expensive natural disaster from a low of six earlier this month up to 100, according to Public Works Department officials.

“Now that we have a hundred crews we can really get down to picking it up,” said Andy Santamaria, manager of the city’s quake recovery program. The crews are expected to haul away 11,000 tons of rubble per day, he said.

The sluggish start was attributed to an unexpectedly high volume of debris dumped on the streets in the days immediately after the Jan. 17 quake, forcing city officials to exhaust all the federal cleanup funds available at the time.

Because of the temporary funding shortage, the city slashed the number of work crews earlier this month from 35 crews to only six, Santamaria said.

“There was so much debris that we started using all these crews seven days a week and that used up all the funds we had allocated faster than we expected,” he said.

An infusion of money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week allowed the city to increase the number of crews to 40. With additional FEMA funds arriving over the weekend, the city hired 20 more crews on Sunday and then 40 more crews on Monday, bringing the total to 100 crews.

Each crew includes four or five workers, two dump trucks and a skip-loader to scoop the rubble into the trucks.

Members of an ad-hoc earthquake recovery committee of the City Council expressed relief with the re-energized cleanup effort.

“It’s really getting bad out there,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, the committee’s chairman. He cited a large pile of rubble near a middle school in Northridge that he feared might create problems for motorists and students.

Santamaria promised that the current debris backlog would be cleared from city streets within three weeks. After that, residential phone requests for additional debris removal can be met within a week, he said.

Already, the city has hauled away about 200,000 tons of rubble. That is only half of what is expected to be cleared away by September. The entire cleanup program must be completed by Jan. 17, 1995--the day the federal government said it will stop paying for the cleanup.

When the program is completed, the city is expected to have spent $108 million in federal funds on debris removal, according to a Public Works report. Another $19 million will be spent to demolish severely damaged buildings and $2 million will be used to fence buildings that are considered public safety hazards, the report said.

A vast majority of the rubble is coming from the San Fernando Valley. But Santamaria said the Hollywood, Westside and Wilshire areas are also generating large loads.

Valley homeowners also expressed relief that the cleanup effort was gaining strength. They complained that piles of broken concrete, stucco and wood have been sitting on city streets for days, creating traffic problems and taking up parking spaces.

“There has been some instances where it’s hard to access streets,” said Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn. “In the hillside areas the streets are narrow so that presents problems.”

Richard Close, president of Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., echoed those sentiments, saying piles of rubble can cause accidents on hillside roads.

“I’ve seen people come around a corner and suddenly there is a five-foot-tall pile on the road that is 30 feet long,” he said.

From Arleta to Van Nuys, homeowners say the amount of debris has begun to increase in recent weeks because insurance checks and federal loans are only now arriving and allowing homeowners to rebuild.

“We are noticing more of it out recently than before,” said Prudy Schultz, a Van Nuys community leader. “It’s almost as though people have been waiting to get their checks.”