Two Neighborhoods / Two Destinies : On a stretch of Balboa Boulevard in Granada Hills, recovery from the quake is a story of firm--if painful--rebound. The area is alive with the sights and sounds of cleanup and rebuilding. : Where Life Was Hopeful, Determination Is Winning Out

The instant the earth heaved under Balboa Boulevard in Granada Hills, sidewalks buckled into two-foot-high humps, back yards were sundered by four-foot wide chasms, and several massive water mains under the block blew, turning the six-lane road into a river.

Joseph and Zetella Partlow were clutching each other in bed when their son Joe cried out. The water main explosion had propelled a 300-pound chunk of asphalt across the pre-dawn sky, through their roof and into Joe’s bed, barely missing him.

One spark, and a huge gas main under Balboa exploded, carving a 10-foot crater that spewed 60-foot flames and cast an eerie orange light over the devastation. Palm trees ferried the fire from house to house. High-voltage wires dangling in water began smoking. The Partlows had 10 minutes to snatch a few paintings, one bottle of insulin, and 10 pieces of clothing. By then, the curtains were on fire.

Across the street, Dawn Herrera screamed to her husband to get the children. Each time Philip Herrera tried walking from the master bedroom to the nursery where 3-week-old Nicole and 4-year-old Quinn slept, the quake slammed him to the ground. Philip began crawling. In covering a few yards, he suffered two broken toes, a black eye and bruises over his entire body. He took a child in each arm, but the knee-deep waters kept him from prying open the front door. He smelled gas everywhere. Philip Herrera broke a window and escaped.

Five of the 40 houses on Balboa burned to the ground. Many others were rendered unlivable. Later that day, retiree Kenneth A. Walkey looked at his devastated house, which he had worked a lifetime to pay off, and for the first time in 30 years, he cried like a baby.

That morning, residents thought they were witnessing the apocalypse. But three months later, Balboa’s well-tended lawns and modest homes are mending, and optimism abounds. Like those on many middle-class blocks, residents have tapped government aid, earthquake insurance, savings and friends to reconstruct.

Walkey’s contractors have begun tearing up his house for repairs. Architects are sketching plans to rebuild another home from the ground up. At one end of the block, much of the Knollwood Village Shopping Center has reopened. At the other, escrow is about to close on a home that sold before the quake. Street crews working round the clock have smoothed gaping holes, laid pipes and repaved. Closed for weeks, Balboa again hums with traffic.

“People will rebuild,” says retiree Jerry Dinoff, who has already received offers for the lot where his house stood before burning down.

Still, Balboa’s renewal has come at great personal cost, especially for its newer residents. People who had squeezed onto the block in recent years now face a diminished lifestyle as they take loans that will swell already high mortgage payments.

With dawn’s light Jan. 17, Philip Herrera knew his life had permanently changed. The quake had rocked his house off its foundation. Flames had charred one corner of it. The water main’s torrent had stripped away every blade of grass on his lawn.

A third-generation Mexican American gardener, Herrera pushed a lawn mower for months without a day off to amass the down payment for his $212,000 Balboa home in 1988. As his fledgling landscaping business grew, he plowed profits into his home. He installed a glassed-in porch, a koi pond and a back-yard waterfall; a week before the quake he poured a basketball court so he could shoot hoops with his son Quinn.

“I put everything into this house. I never thought I could own something like this,” he says in a choked voice, standing in brown muck that surrounds his stucco home. “It took us 10 years to get where we are. In 20 seconds, it was gone,” he says, snapping his fingers.

With $120,000 in damage and with no earthquake insurance, Herrera runs his hands through his hair nervously. “I’m very scared now. I don’t sleep at night,” he says quietly. “I’m facing months of hell.”

Herrera’s response to the situation: a frenetic effort to rebuild. Already, the government has approved a $77,000 loan at 3.6% interest. With the help of friends who are contractors and some savings, he has stripped the inside of the house down to the dirt, repoured the foundation, replaced cracked water and gas pipes, and gutted the kitchen.

For nearly three months, the Herreras slept a few days each week at his in-laws’ home 145 miles away, and the other days with his parents in San Fernando, where he and his wife and two children shared a bedroom.

They were finally able to move back into their half-repaired home April 9. “My little baby is back in her crib,” says Dawn Herrera, cooing at her 5-month-old daughter. “Things are getting back to normal.”

Thirteen houses south, the Korbekian family has snatched up a $60,000 government loan to mend several cracks that jag from foundation to roof--a move that will repair their house but cripple their finances. “I thought of walking away, but all I have is this house,” says Avedis Korbekian, a quiet elevator mechanic who came to Granada Hills from Iran after the fall of the Shah. Over the years, $65,000 in mortgage payments and $50,000 in home improvements left meager savings.

“Fourteen years we work here. Now look what we have,” his wife Jacquleen says in a thick Armenian accent, throwing up her hands in despair.

The Korbekians’ $60,000 disaster loan means their mortgage payment will jump $380 a month, to $1,400, for the next 20 years. Jacquleen, who provides day care in their home, worries that the payments may be impossible to meet now that she has lost three of the six children she cared for before the temblor.

“It will be very hard, very tight,” says the portly 56-year-old woman, shaking her head as she sips a brackish brew of Armenian coffee, then jumps skittishly in her living room chair as a truck rumbling by sets glasses in the china cabinet clinking.

Dashed are many hopes: buying a larger home, weekend trips to Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, the couple’s planned trip this summer to Austria for the wedding of Avedis’ brother, perhaps a last chance to see his mother and seven siblings flying in for the ceremony. “Life won’t be the same. I’ll never recover from this,” Avedis says, staring blankly at the ground.

While nearly everyone on Balboa Boulevard feels permanently scarred by the quake, experts say middle-class homeowners like the Herreras and Korbekians are best served by disaster relief efforts. Government agencies provide a variety of low-interest loans that generally are not available to renters and the poor.

Still, Comerio, the Berkeley disaster expert, and others warn that even on middle-class blocks such as Balboa, there are limits to the largess. True to past disasters, only 60% of homeowners seeking low-interest Small Business Administration loans--the federal government’s main recovery tool--are getting them. Many victims of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake waited two years for aid, said Comerio, who was hired by the state to study the recovery from that disaster.

More than half of the homeowners with earthquake insurance had not settled their claims four months or more after the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, a separate 1993 study found. Only a third had 80% or more of their losses reimbursed; many said adjusters low-balled repair costs.

Protracted battles with insurance companies and government agencies ensure one thing: Stress and depression levels are much higher seven months after an earthquake than on the day the ground shakes, according to another study.

Among the stresses on Balboa: neighbors grappling to understand a system that seems unfair. People on Balboa who made costly earthquake insurance payments are furious when they see neighbors who did not buy the policies rewarded with taxpayer funds and low-interest loans. Even before the quake’s dust had settled, marvels Joseph Partlow, one neighbor who makes $100,000 annual salary but did not have insurance was pleading for government assistance in Federal Emergency Management Agency lines. “You shouldn’t expect the government to bail you out!” Partlow huffs.

Neighbors gossip about who got what. Some received FEMA grant checks for home repair totaling $3,450, while others with seemingly less damage got $5,100. Still others emerged empty-handed.

Kenneth Walkey, who will tap quake insurance and retirement savings to rebuild, puzzles over why he and many of his neighbors have been offered a government loan that covers only half the lowest estimate he received to reconstruct.

Up and down the block, disaster assistance has cemented views that a government largely funded by the middle class doles out disaster dollars mostly to the poor or illegal immigrants.

Jacquleen Korbekian complains that her family must repay their government loan with interest. “I expected a zero-interest loan,” she says. “I paid taxes all my life. Other people don’t work. They get food stamps, they get grants. It’s not fair. It’s the middle class who always lose out.”

There is venom for the insurers, too. Kevin Patrick stands by a handwritten log five pages long taped to his kitchen wall that details dozens of calls he made trying to get a settlement from his earthquake insurer. Many believe companies are low-balling them. Herrera said that after 40 calls and threats of legal action, his homeowners insurance company has agreed to pay only a fifth of his fire damage costs.

“If they had a representative here you’d have to jail me or I’d beat them up,” Herrera says, his hands curling into fists.

Many on Balboa have sought solace and support in one another, turning feuding neighbors into friends. Kenneth Walkey and his neighbor had not spoken in 20 years, mostly because the neighbor’s dog had a habit of soiling Walkey’s yard. Walkey retaliated by depositing the dog’s waste in the neighbor’s pool. When the block faced days without electricity after the temblor, the Walkeys offered to share their generator with the neighbors. Now they share stories of lousy contractors and callous insurers as the block begins to bloom.

Back in Business

In a middle-class area along Balboa Boulevard in Granada Hills, five of 40 houses burned to the ground and many others were badly damaged. But optimistic residents are already well on the way to rebuilding.