The Category Is ‘Quake-Proof Home’ and the Answer Is . . .

The latest subject to argue about in the San Fernando Valley has nothing to do wit O. J., the baseball strike or whether the recent Mexican presidential election was on the up and up or the same old cooked-up job.

It has to do with “hazard mitigation.”

That’s U.S. government jargon for preparing your home for the next big earthquake by strapping your water heater to the wall, installing safety latches on your cabinets and applying safety film to your windows.

How you prefer to do those things can make for some lively debates.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services are sponsoring a series of workshops throughout the county to provide quake-proofing tips.

But ever since the Jan. 17 temblor scrambled people’s houses, belongings and minds, everyone seems to have their own opinions about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to hot topics like how to hang pictures or brace the TV.

We’ll get to that later. First, more FEMA jargon.

“If people would have followed structural and non-structural mitigation measures, we probably would have had less injuries and property damage,” Mario Giaverdi, a FEMA hazard mitigation specialist, recently told a small gathering at the Earthquake Service Center in Sherman Oaks.

What he said was that if you had quake-prepped your home correctly, you probably wouldn’t be fantasizing now about dynamiting your insurance company’s offices.

Giaverdi and his partner, Carlos Araujo, began by encouraging the audience to ask questions.

Wrong move.

Araujo was explaining how easy it is to install safety latches on cabinets to prevent the contents from falling out when Barbara Parmet of North Hollywood interrupted: “They’re not that easy to install. To line them up. . . . ?”

“That’s right. They are hard to line up,” echoed a man who would identify himself later only as Gordon of West Hills.

“But I’m saying relatively ,” said Araujo, backpedaling quickly. “There are some other products that require a handyman. Yeah, it requires some time and practice. Yeah, be prepared to spend maybe a weekend or two to get this all together.”

Moving right along to water heaters.

Disapproving of FEMA’s display model, affixed to the wall with metal plumbers’ straps, he urged the group to “instead . . . use a 22-gauge metal strap with three-inch lag screws that are at least 5/16 of an inch thick. The straps should be nine inches from the top and four inches from the pilot light.”

“I have a device that attaches from the top of the water heater,” Gordon offered. “You attach it to the wall and it holds the whole thing.”

OK, there is more than one way to strap your water heater to the wall, Araujo told the group, but the important thing is to do it, because the water in the tank is potable.

“You know how to get the water out?” Gordon piped up, sounding like a bright seventh-grader who has thought of a question that will stump the teacher.

“Just turn the faucet located at the bottom of the tank,” Araujo responded.

“You can turn that all you want and water won’t come out,” Gordon gloated. “You have to loosen the top so you have air come through. Nobody tells anybody that.”

“Well, I just learned something,” Araujo said.

OK, on to stud finders, the devices that locate wall studs--the strong vertical timbers hidden behind the weak plaster panels. Slid across the wall, they are supposed to flash or beep when a stud lies beneath.

Giaverdi asked if anyone in the audience had used a stud finder. One woman had.

“Did it work for you?” Giaverdi asked.

“No,” she responded.

Well, they don’t always work the way they should, Giaverdi said, explaining that studs can also be found near light switches and electrical outlets.

“I just drill holes all along the wall until I find one,” Parmet said.

Araujo suggested that if you are going to make a lot of holes in the wall, use a wood finish nail and work along the baseboard.

“Yeah, but you can’t do that on a baseboard, because there is a two-by-four that goes right along there and you won’t find a stud unless you come up just above it,” Gordon chimed in.

“That’s what I meant to say,” Araujo said.

On to furniture.

The official FEMA display of a bookcase attached to a wall with L brackets “looks pretty ugly,” Araujo commented.

He pointed out that the brackets could be inverted or attached from the inside of the bookcase to be hidden from view.

After the meeting, Olga Hammer, 66, of Woodland Hills said the workshop was informative.

“I think I have gotten more help tonight than I have gotten anywhere since the earthquake,” she said. “There was more concrete information. I never knew how to properly use a stud finder until tonight.”

Gordon, who seemed to know it all before he got there, said he was surprised more people did not attend.

“It’s to everybody’s advantage. Everybody must be burying their heads in the sand,” he said, ignoring the inevitability of more--and stronger--quakes.

So did the expert learn anything at the workshop?

“I’m pretty much done with what I have to do,” Gordon said. “It’s just that I come to these things in case I overlooked something.”

And to offer his opinion.