Challenges Abound for State Disaster Chief : Recovery: Director of emergency services won praise for swift response to quake. Now, battle for federal aid is setting off political tremors.

For Richard Andrews, director of California’s Office of Emergency Services, rapid response is the first goal when disaster strikes. When the Northridge earthquake hit at 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, Andrews, in Sacramento, was notified within minutes.

By noon, he had secured federal assistance, organized appropriate state agencies, ascertained key facts about damage and injuries, held a dawn news conference, flown south with Gov. Pete Wilson and other top state officials and initiated moves to demolish ruptured freeway sections.

At that moment, Andrews was already well into a second major career. For 12 years, until 1980, he was an academician, teaching American political history at the University of Redlands.

Then, with the help of a former student, he got into disaster work, starting with a study of earthquake probabilities and eventually, in 1991, becoming director of the OES, the largest such state agency in the United States, where he has won the respect of both local officials and scientists for hard work and receptivity to their ideas.

Now, his role has launched him into a third career of sorts--and perhaps his most controversial. Since the Northridge earthquake, Andrews, 53, has drifted toward a political role, becoming the point man for the Wilson Administration in the high-stakes contest over earthquake aid. Part negotiator, part lightning rod, he is jousting with the Clinton Administration over how much money California will get for repair and strengthening of structures damaged in the earthquake.

The chief spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Morrie Goodman, recently charged that Andrews has been criticizing the adequacy of federal aid “because he wants [FEMA Director] James Witt’s job” in a Pete Wilson White House.

But Witt--who himself vaulted to the White House after being Clinton’s state disaster chief in Arkansas--declined to be so harsh. “I don’t blame Dick,” he said, “in the sense that he’s trying to get all the dollars he can get for California.”

Andrews later said he had had a cordial conversation with Witt and remained convinced that if the state prepares the legal ground for the aid requests by changing building codes in the precise way FEMA officials are suggesting, substantial additional aid will be forthcoming.

“I’m not coveting anybody else’s job,” he responded to Goodman’s remark.

But his loyalty to and identification with Wilson, who is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and his own ambition, seem clear.

“Of course, he’d like to be FEMA director,” chuckled Lucy Jones, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who has worked closely with Andrews in fashioning the first advisories to the public of near-term earthquake risks in Southern California.

“He could succeed to Witt’s job,” she said. “He’s a strong personality who’s dominated a lot of things, but you look at how the state responded to recent disasters and it’s a really exemplary record. And he’s had more than a few disasters to deal with.”

Asked to assess Andrews, Wilson made the same point.

“Since 1991, the people of California have faced man-made and natural disasters of biblical proportions,” the governor said. “Californians are indeed fortunate to have Richard Andrews in their corner. Despite all the challenges he has been put through, Dick Andrews and his team of emergency management workers have pulled California through some of the most difficult times it has ever faced.”

As an agency, the Office of Emergency Services does not have a particularly large budget, nor a very sizable staff, although it has many functions and does increase in size in emergencies.

The 1995-96 budget is only $15 million, Andrews is paid $90,704 a year and the permanent staff numbers 275, although, due to Northridge quake recovery responsibilities, temporary workers have brought the staff to about 830.

Andrews, who grew up in the Midwest and got his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern, is married to the former Cindy Wilson, a deputy school superintendent in Redlands, and has a son, Rory, 6. He maintains a condo in Sacramento but spends two or three days a week in Southern California.

The OES operates a 24-hour Sacramento emergency center charged with immediate response and coordination of state efforts to deal with emergencies that pose a significant threat to life, property or the environment in California. They include earthquakes, floods, fires, riots, major toxic spills, terrorist acts and nuclear acts. There have been 30 declared disasters since Andrews has held the director’s job.

After severe communications problems arose in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the OES established its own statewide satellite-based communications system. It operates regional offices in Pasadena, Los Alamitos, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Redding and Fresno, and Andrews accompanies the governor on all disaster inspections.

In several interviews, Andrews put particular emphasis on rapid response and expressed pride that unlike Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992, or this year’s Kobe earthquake in Japan, where officials faltered in their early efforts at relief, California relief efforts have been prompt and efficient.

The furious activity of the day of the Northridge quake is his favorite example, beginning when he was notified at 4:45 a.m. by the OES Emergency Center.

“I turned on TV and Sacramento stations were showing the KNBC newsroom in L.A.,” he recalled. “As soon as I saw the devastation there, I knew we had a major earthquake.

“One of the first calls I made as soon as I got into the office was to James Lee Witt and requested that he put on alert all the nation’s search and rescue teams and the national disaster medical system. We were also in touch with Caltrans and the CHP [California Highway Patrol], and we sent a staff member to [the seismological lab and press center at] Caltech.

“Within about 90 minutes we had a fairly good idea of what the freeway disruptions were. I did a press conference at 6:30 a.m. and we were inaccurate in only a few cases. We knew about the Gavin Canyon freeway collapse, the I-5/SR-14 interchange and where the epicenter was.

“I flew down with Gov. Wilson, his chief of staff, the commissioner of the CHP and the director of Caltrans. We left Sacramento about 10 a.m., and arrived at L.A. City Hall about midday. On that flight, the governor gave the first orders that led to the quick start on the freeway demolitions and reconstruction.”

For all this, Andrews and the Wilson Administration got high marks. It was only much later, as claims for federal assistance mounted, that FEMA’s Goodman began charging that Andrews had from the beginning, “sought to maximize the governor’s role” and contributed to a “sour relationship” with federal authorities who were putting up virtually all the funds.

The only serious criticism of state response times in any disaster in Andrews’ years at the OES concerns foul-ups with weapons and deployment that kept the National Guard off the streets for nearly 24 hours when riots erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 after the first Rodney G. King verdict.

Asked about this, he declared, “The standards that the National Guard had always used called for them to have troops on the street in 24 hours. They met that time line. The thing that caused the perception they were slow was that unlike other riots, most of the serious rioting was in the morning of the second day, before they arrived. . . . The OES was not directly involved in the deploying of the Guard.”

Andrews is praised by the scientific community for cooperating with such projects as the quake advisories and the Parkfield earthquake prediction experiment.

“It’s not like I’ve never had differences of opinion with Dick,” said Allan Lindh, who for a long period was scientist in charge of earthquake research in California for the Geological Survey. “But when we started the Parkfield experiment in 1985, scientists had no working relationship with OES, and I think most of us thought we could not get along at all with bureaucrats and politicians.

“Boy, were we surprised. It turned out when we got to know one another, we spoke the same language, had the same concerns, we were on the same wavelength. We all believed we had important obligations to the people of California.”

Lindh said that when earthquakes occurred at odd hours, “I’ve had him call me many times, even at 2 a.m. He makes his own telephone calls and reaches his own conclusions about the advisories that should be issued.”

Andrews is not only concentrating on the recent past, with the remarkable record of three of the 10 costliest disasters in American history having occurred in the Los Angeles area in the last three years.

He also has an eye on what might occur in the future, declaring, “We’re all too conscious we may not have faced the worst yet, particularly in regards to earthquakes.”