Nearly a Year After Quake, U.S. Aid Exceeds $5 Billion : Recovery: More than 500,000 people and businesses have received funds. But billions in damage remain.

With the one-year anniversary of the Northridge earthquake about a week away, more than 500,000 individuals and businesses have received in excess of $5 billion in federal aid.

The relief payments have surpassed those after any previous U.S. disaster and made Uncle Sam the largest mortgage lender in Los Angeles County last year, records and interviews show.

The bulk of assistance went to disaster victims in the San Fernando Valley, on Los Angeles’ Westside, and in the Santa Clarita Valley and Ventura County.

But the government also provided millions of dollars in earthquake aid to residents and businesses as far from the epicenter as southern Los Angeles County and Orange County, according to a Times analysis of payments made by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The distribution of government grants reflects the capricious nature of the Jan. 17 earthquake. Nearly 7,000 residents of Compton received about $15 million in FEMA aid--more than was provided to some neighborhoods closer to the epicenter, including Burbank, San Fernando and Hollywood.

“What was so amazing was how widespread the damage was,” said Dick Krimm, FEMA associate director for response and recovery who took a helicopter tour of the Los Angeles Basin shortly after the earthquake. “You could see, 10 or 15 miles from the epicenter, plastic sheathing on the roofs of houses where chimneys had fallen.”

This week, top Clinton Administration officials are scheduled to come to Los Angeles for a series of events to assess the recovery effort.

In a 62-page report to be delivered to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Monday, the Administration declares that the government responded to the magnitude 6.7 earthquake “more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.” But the report notes that “as many as several billions of dollars in damages have still not been adequately addressed.”

Riordan on Saturday summed up the federal response in one word--”incredible.”

“Washington’s aid, coupled with Angelenos’ resiliency and collaborative efforts to overcome adversity, put Los Angeles on the map as a city that can be shaken but not broken,” Riordan said, adding that he looks to “continuing our partnership as we move forward on the long road to recovery.”

The federal government has allocated nearly $11 billion in quake relief, including the $5 billion in FEMA and SBA aid to individuals and businesses, plus billions of dollars more for repair of public facilities, ranging from freeways and hospitals to the Los Angeles Coliseum and the Anaheim Stadium scoreboard.

“There is considerable damage that remains out there,” said FEMA spokesman Morrie Goodman. “The Administration will certainly seek to find funding for all eligible costs.”

Disaster victims offer mixed opinions on the government response.

“It’s been just one paper trail after another,” said Karen McKenna, who stormed into a FEMA office last spring with a dead rat from her devastated Northridge home.

Carol Fox, forced out of her red-tagged North Hills apartment by the earthquake, said she was unable to get any help from FEMA until August--when the agency sent her $700.

“As far as I’m concerned, the government can go to hell, because it’s not there for us,” Fox said. “I lost everything. I got out in pajamas with tennis shoes, and I had to fight for 700 bucks.”

Mary Kapich, on the other hand, was pleased with FEMA’s speedy response to damage at the Chatsworth Mobile Home Park where she lives.

She got through to FEMA on the jammed phone lines on the Friday after the quake, and two days later an inspector came to survey the damage to her home.

“I was impressed with the speed, and the man that came was very nice and very thorough, and gave us a lot of hints on what to do,” she said. Within days, Kapich had a check from FEMA to use with earthquake insurance in fixing her home.

The government has provided assistance to a population larger than the city of Denver, according to an analysis by Times director of computer analysis Richard O’Reilly.

Interviews and government data show:

* Nearly 670,000 requests for aid have been received--more than double the previous high set in Hurricane Hugo in 1989. With a Jan. 20 deadline to apply for government aid, officials are gearing up for a last-minute flood of applications. Between 350 and 400 applications a week are pouring into FEMA.

* FEMA has provided about 400,000 people with an average $2,800 cash grant. Federal emergency housing assistance is available to disaster victims, regardless of income. Indeed, some $4.3 million in FEMA aid went to about 1,400 households of one of the region’s priciest neighborhoods, Beverly Hills 90210, with an average median household income of about $88,000 a year.

* The SBA has approved 115,878 home, personal and business loans to finance at least part of the repairs. The average loan was $25,070 to homes and $64,788 to businesses.

* A state program partly funded by FEMA has provided “individual and family grants” of up to $22,500 to 196,399 households unable to qualify for SBA loans or draw on any other resource to pay for basic necessities, such as replacing lost dentures or damaged appliances.

The state has awarded 136 disaster-related funeral grants--even though FEMA lists the official death toll from the earthquake at 57. Some grants went to survivors of victims of heart attacks and other fatal ailments after the quake.

* About 75% of requests for FEMA aid were approved--roughly the same percentage as for previous disasters. The approval rate was higher in hard-hit neighborhoods closest to the epicenter--86% of the requests for FEMA aid in one Northridge ZIP code were approved.

* About 55% of the SBA loan applications have been approved--a lower rate than in many previous disasters. The SBA approved 74% of the loan applications after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and 56% of the applications after the 1993 wildfires.

Nonetheless, officials said the SBA, in its quake relief effort, approved more property loans in Los Angeles County last year than any financial institution.

Many Do Not Qualify

“How often do you find that any federal agency would be the largest mortgage lender in any locale?” asked Bernard Kulik, SBA assistant administrator for disaster assistance. “It is probably the first time it has ever happened.”

SBA officials have said many disaster victims could not qualify for loans because the recession and defense industry cutbacks had left them in precarious financial condition.

FEMA responded fastest to requests for aid from neighborhoods closest to the epicenter. But it took the SBA longer to process loan applications from the San Fernando Valley than from communities farther away from the epicenter, such as Orange County. SBA officials could not explain the disparity.

In FEMA’s haste to deliver checks, the agency mailed 48,000 checks to residents, many who had not formally applied for aid. This prompted some surprise and outrage among residents, but officials said they wanted to assure that every resident in the most devastated neighborhoods had money for emergency shelter.

“We went back and inspected every one of those houses later on,” said Larry Zensinger, FEMA director of human services. “If the people deserved more, we sent them another check. If they deserved less, we asked them to reimburse us.”

FEMA officials said that hundreds of residents have returned money.

A Times’ analysis shows that FEMA took an average of about a month to process requests for aid, although officials say they processed requests from the most heavily damaged areas within an average of a week to 10 days.

Data shows that requests for individual and family grants--a program administered by the state but 75% funded by FEMA--took substantially longer, an average of two months. State officials said they implemented a fast-track system in July that put checks in the hands of the most needy in an average of three weeks. They say they have now processed more than 90% of the requests for aid.

Residents of just about every community extending from Ventura County through Los Angeles County to Orange County received some FEMA aid, records show.

As of Nov. 2, 1994, the bulk of the FEMA payments--112,750--went to residents who listed Los Angeles as their address. Next were Northridge, with 27,588 recipients; Granada Hills, 14,187, and Sylmar, 10,819. In Santa Monica, 8,511 residents received FEMA aid.

The aid to nearly 7,000 residents of Compton, with 90,000 population, surprised some building officials, who could not recall major damage there. “There was damage in many people’s homes,” said Compton Mayor Omar Bradley.

FEMA aid went to about 5,000 residents of Inglewood and 3,300 residents of Long Beach. FEMA checks were sent to dozens of residents in Orange County cities.

Federal officials have said they have not found much fraud. There have been 39 arrests relating to fraudulent earthquake aid requests.

Nearly a year after the quake, and more than 11,000 aftershocks later, life is hardly back to normal for Karen McKenna.

$100,000 Damage to Home

The quake and its aftershocks inflicted at least $100,000 in damage to her home in Northridge, and she did not have quake insurance.

Like thousands of others, McKenna got $3,450 from FEMA soon after the quake. But she said she was told she did not qualify for up to $10,000 for emergency repairs because that amount of money would do little to make her home habitable.

She said she also was denied an SBA loan for repairs. McKenna’s income was down because one of the two bars she runs in the San Fernando Valley was closed by quake damage.

When she found a rat that had entered through cracks in her roof, McKenna took its carcass to the Chatsworth FEMA office. “I said, ‘Here, you want to come and live with this?’ ”

Without additional government help, McKenna said, she has missed mortgage payments and expects to lose her house. “I’m just kind of beaten,” she said.

Maureen Hanley’s mobile home in Sylmar was incinerated within minutes of the quake. She and her teen-age daughter escaped the blaze, but lost all of their possessions. According to Hanley, she also lost her job at a retirement home because she was too nervous to report to work the Monday after the quake.

Hanley said FEMA provided $3,450 for rent. “I had no shoes on my feet,” she said. “I had a school-age daughter who had to go to school who didn’t have any clothes.”

For several more months, Hanley said, she received no further assistance. She was turned down for an SBA loan, she said, but received a $22,000 individual and family grant. She is still renting and hopes to get into a place of her own.

“The pieces are starting to go back together,” Hanley said. “A lot of people say you should be lucky you’re alive, and you are.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Emergency Grants by Area

The following locales were the top recipients of emergency grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the Northridge earthquake.

NUMBER AMOUNT LOCATION APPROVED (MILLIONS) Los Angeles 112,750 $269.6 Northridge 27,588 $105.9 Granada Hills 14,187 $ 53.7 Sylmar 10,819 $ 53.2 Woodland Hills 15,147 $ 52.6 Reseda 16,237 $ 52.4 Sherman Oaks 15,210 $ 49.8 Simi Valley 16,812 $ 49.4 Van Nuys 19,366 $ 46.2 Canoga Park 16,881 $ 45.1 Chatsworth 9,678 $ 35.7 North Hollywood 12,921 $ 26.6 Santa Monica 8,511 $ 24.5 North Hills 7,151 $ 23.5 Tarzana 7,340 $ 22.9 Santa Clarita 7,064 $ 19.7 Encino 7,102 $ 18.9 Canyon Country 5,586 $ 15.9 Studio City 4,875 $ 15.6 West Hills 5,742 $ 15.4 Compton 6,977 $ 14.9 Valencia 5,447 $ 14.1 Pacoima 6,245 $ 13.4 Glendale 6,370 $ 11.3 Mission Hills 3,409 $ 11.1 San Fernando 4,506 $ 10.9 Burbank 3,955 $ 10.2 Saugus 3,578 $ 9.9 Beverly Hills 2,642 $ 9.3 Calabasas 2,867 $ 8.7 Hollywood 3,115 $ 7.9

Note: The locales are based on addresses provided by applicants. Figures are as of Nov. 2, 1994.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Federal Quake Aid

The federal government through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration has provided more than $5 billion in earthquake aid to more than 500,000 Southern California residents, according to a Times computer analysis. Nearly 75% of the applications for emergency grants from FEMA have been approved. About 55% of business and home loan applications to the SBA have been granted. The following maps list the approval rates by ZIP code.

Sources: FEMA and SBA