Assembly Passes Bill That Targets Price Gouging Following Disaster : Earthquake: The new law, prompted by inflated costs after the January temblor, would protect consumers.

In the anguished hours after the Northridge earthquake, many who were fortunate enough to reach stores and gas stations found themselves paying inflated prices for the items they desperately needed.

Examples include $300 for a $100 sheet of plywood, $10 for a $1.59 pack of batteries, $12.15 for a liter of water and $850 to replace one foot of pipe.

A bill that would outlaw such price gouging in the wake of such a natural disaster passed the Assembly on Monday and is expected to breeze through the Senate.

One of a series of fix-it bills that stemmed from lessons learned in the Jan. 17 temblor, the legislation by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) met with little resistance, except for some Republicans grumbling over price-fixing.

“Everyone supports the free enterprise system,” said Katz, “but I think everyone understands it’s reprehensible to take advantage of a disaster to rip people off.”

Although the city of Los Angeles already has such a law in place, pockets of the hard-hit quake zone, such as the city of San Fernando, were unprotected. The new measure, if passed by the Senate and signed into law by Gov. Pete Wilson, would apply statewide.

The bill makes it a misdemeanor to raise prices on critical goods and services after a calamity that results in the declaring of a state of emergency by either the governor or the president.

Complaints of price gouging seemed to come in waves after the Northridge quake as consumers called a county hot line, said Pastor Herrara Jr., director of the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs.

In the first several days, convenience stores and gas stations ranked among the worst violators, Herrara said. Then, as rebuilding began, victims fingered hardware stores for jacking up plywood prices, contractors for overcharging in clearing debris and plumbers for increasing fees to connect water heaters.

Today, the hot line gets a lot of calls about landlords who refuse to turn over renters’ security deposits.

Resolving these cases has proved challenging, Herrara said, because building owners are stretched financially after the quake’s devastation.

Overall, about 1,400 complaints have been registered on the county’s hot line, a figure that some community activists say reflects only a fraction of the true number of cases that occurred.

“I’m sure there were more than that,” said the Rev. Tom Rush, of Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima and a member of the Valley-based grass-roots group VOICE.

Rush witnessed the problem firsthand as he and others demonstrated on a street corner near a gas station that increased fuel prices after the quake. As the group protested, motorists pulled up to report they were overcharged even as the demonstration took place.

“It’s very destructive and it’s not what our community is all about,” Rush said. “Merchants and the community should have a sense of pulling together after a tragedy. When it doesn’t happen, it creates a lot of rifts.”

Rush and other VOICE members went store to store, trying to talk owners out of inflating prices. “We just hope that when there’s a disaster in the future, this new legislation will help keep things in line,” he said.

Whether the governor will sign the bill into law if it passes the Senate was unclear Monday. Wilson’s office said he rarely takes a position before a bill has passed both houses of the Legislature.