Los Angeles Times Special Quake Report: One Year Later : Still Shaken / Voices : From the Epicenter to D.C.: Reflections on the Devastation : ALVIN MARTIN

Alvin Martin, 62, and his wife Mattie Dyer Martin, 56, dropped the earthquake insurance on their West Adams-area home two weeks before the Northridge quake. Their block near Crenshaw Boulevard just south of the Santa Monica Freeway and its surrounding neighborhood were damaged so heavily that the area has been designated a “ghost town.” They faced this choice: forgo the modest luxuries of retirement so they could afford $50,000 in repairs, or work on the house themselves over time.

* There was an earthquake just before the Northridge quake that caused about $4,000 damage to the house. The insurance man came over and said that I would have to pay for the repair, since it was under my $12,500 deductible.

Shortly after that I canceled the policy, since that experience made me think I was wasting my money. I thought I would probably never have more than $12,500 worth of damage to the house.

I guess I kind of blew it on that one. Two weeks later the Northridge quake hit.

. . . We were able to get the foundation retrofitted right away and paid for by FEMA. We were thankful for what we got. They didn’t have to help us at all, really, but it was a help even though we had to take some of the little we had saved and put it into repairs.

At first I got sort of a panic loan to pay for the repairs. I just wanted to return my house to its previous condition. Then I realized that the payments left me with little to spend each month, and would stretch over 18 years.

I’m 62 already, and I’ll feel blessed to last another 10 years. I had set aside X amount of dollars to enjoy the balance of my life, and I didn’t want to sink it into a house I’d already paid for, without even a little mad money to go fishing occasionally.

So we talked it over and decided to give the money back. We’re both on fixed incomes, and the payments would have left us without money to do anything, even see a movie. We didn’t want to spend these years watching traffic go by.

Instead, we’re going to save and do a little at a time. We should be able to repair two bedrooms this year. Then we’ll start saving for the next project, like the garage. . . . When the earthquake happened, all we were hearing about on television was Northridge. “What are we, animals?” we asked each other. There’s one house here that was completely down, and they were talking only about Northridge. There were people standing outside who couldn’t even go back into their houses to get their clothes.

We can laugh now, but it was really frightening. I thought that it was such a violent quake that the roof fell on me. I couldn’t get up and thought the ceiling was on me. Then I saw that (Mattie) was holding me so tightly she had a death-grip on me. I said, “Baby you have to let me go so I can get up.”