4 Years After Northridge, Recovery Isn’t Over

For most people, the Northridge earthquake is little more than a faded memory. But for Wanda Raynard, it has been a living nightmare that she wakes to every day.

For these past four years, the 72-year-old widow has lived in a rental house, unable to return to her home of 39 years because of a drawn-out dispute with her insurance company over the cost of quake repairs.

When she does enter the barren Northridge home where she raised her two children, she stares at the cracks that streak her walls, she smokes--more than she should--and cries, praying for the day she can repair her house and get on with her life.

“The strain is constant. There is no end to this,” she said, choking back tears between cigarette puffs. “My whole life is in limbo.”

Four years after the nation’s costliest disaster struck in the predawn darkness of Jan. 17, 1994, the rubble piles are gone, disjointed freeways are whole and most homes and businesses are repaired.

But the recovery is far from over, and many victims like Raynard have yet to put their lives back in order. Some of the most vexing problems remain--problems that may be the quake’s legacies for another four years or longer.

Consider:

* Because of political vacillation, about two-thirds of all public buildings for which federal repair funds were sought--including schools, hospitals, police stations and government buildings--have yet to complete repairs.

* Many large commercial buildings have not been repaired because of exorbitant costs or funding disputes. The owners of 20 steel-frame buildings--including the Westside Pavilion shopping center--have yet to complete the inspections and repairs required by the city to ensure that the structures will withstand the next quake.

* Hundreds of insurance disputes, such as those that have kept Raynard out of her home, are still unresolved. Many have moved to the courtroom. A support group for homeowners who are fighting their insurance companies meets twice a week. Still, more than 90% of the housing units damaged by the quake have been repaired, mostly because of special loan programs offered by federal and city government.

* Lawyers at a legal clinic say crooked contractors continue to prey on unsuspecting homeowners, primarily in South-Central Los Angeles, who are trying to prepare their homes for the next quake.

In raw numbers, the quake’s toll is staggering.

The 6.7-magnitude temblor killed 72 people, injured nearly 12,000 and damaged more than 100,000 homes and businesses from Ventura to Orange County.

It caused $40 billion to $42 billion in damage--with insurance companies and governments offering only $25 billion in payouts and aid, according to state and federal emergency officials.

The Northridge earthquake easily surpassed 1992’s Hurricane Andrew--which caused $30 billion in damage--as the nation’s most expensive disaster.

Because of the unprecedented impact of the quake, business leaders, economists and others say a complete economic recovery is still years away.

“It is easily a couple or three more years to completely erase the effects of the quake,” said economist Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “But you never really erase them.”

Although Kyser and other economists believe that most of the jobs lost to the quake have been regained, they say many companies are suffering a slow recovery.

“Many businesses used up working capital to make repairs, and that working capital is usually used for marketing and new technology,” said John Rooney, president of the Valley Economic Development Center, a nonprofit group dedicated to revitalizing Valley business after the quake.

A number of Los Angeles buildings are still in disrepair, and many others have yet to undergo retrofitting work to withstand the next big quake.

Repairs on nearly two-thirds of the 7,500 public buildings in the region for which federal funds were sought have not been completed, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.

FEMA spokesman John Treanor predicts that it will take another three to four years to allocate the entire $3.4 billion that has been set aside for such public buildings--most of which are schools.

*

In most cases, the delays are due to indecision by political bodies on how to proceed.

It took almost three years of debate and study before the Los Angeles City Council approved a five-year, $273-million seismic retrofit and rehabilitation program for the 72-year-old City Hall. Some city officials now say that the final cost could reach $350 million.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided only two months ago on a plan to replace the badly damaged County-USC Medical Center, the nation’s busiest public hospital. The new, 600-bed facility is expected to be completed in 2004--just in time for the 10th anniversary of the Northridge quake.

Other facilities are still in disrepair because of the sheer magnitude of the work needed.

Cal State Northridge leased more than 400 trailers after the quake caused $330 million in damage to 107 structures. Today, 31 of those facilities are still in need of repair, and about half of the trailers remain. About 25% of the classes on the campus are still taught in the trailers.

Because of the high cost of repairs, government officials are struggling to prod the owners of many large commercial buildings to complete repairs.

Not long after the quake, city officials required the owners of steel-frame buildings to inspect for earthquake damage. As of last month, the owners of 20 commercial buildings had yet to complete the required inspections or repairs, according to city officials.

A spokesman for the Westside Pavilion shopping center said he expects the repairs to be completed in six weeks.

Nicolino Delli Quadri, a senior structural engineer with the Building and Safety Department, said his department has decided to start getting tough on building owners who have failed to comply with the city requirements. He said last week that the department plans to issue notices to building owners to inspect or begin repairs of their structures by the end of January or face an order to vacate.

But some repairs have been delayed because of disputes with government agencies and owners over costs.

*

At the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, an empty lot marks the site of a building that housed 60 Alzheimer’s patients. The brick structure was so badly damaged that it had to be razed a few months ago. Officials at the retirement home have yet to reach an agreement with FEMA on funding for a replacement building.

Forty-five of the patients formerly housed in the building have lived for the past four years at the North Hollywood Medical Center, 12 miles away.

After the earthquake, the region was awash with crooked contractors trying to make an easy buck at the expense of jittery homeowners. Many of those contractors continue to take advantage of people--particularly elderly residents in South-Central.

“What I’m seeing is a whole crew of home improvement contractors that are literally preying on the fears about the next earthquake,” said Manuel Duran, an attorney with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a legal clinic in the Fairfax area.

Even now, 30% of the home improvement scams that his office receives involve quake repair swindles, he said. Often, Duran said, the contractor will offer to retrofit an aging home only to “discover” hidden damage that dramatically increases the cost of repairs.

Other homeowners continue to fight their insurance companies over quake repair claims.

*

At Raynard’s home, the quake cracked the walls and ceilings and shook loose asbestos from the ceiling, contaminating her clothes, furniture, dishes and most of her appliances--all of which had to be thrown away.

She left her home with little more than the clothes on her back and a few family photo albums and other mementos.

Over the past four years, she said, her insurance company has assigned 13 adjusters to her case, each one quoting a different settlement.

She believes that her insurance company is shortchanging her by more than $100,000, which she said is needed to repair cracks in her hardwood floors and bathroom fixtures and replace the asbestos-contaminated oven, air conditioner and heater, among other things.

Raynard sees no end in sight to her insurance dispute.

“I thought I’d be out of there for three months,” she said. “Never in my wildest thoughts did I think I’d spend my fourth Christmas in a rental house.”

Insurance firms acknowledge that many claims remain unsettled, but they say that those claims represent a fraction of all those filed after the quake. “The fact is, that if you look at over 630,000 claims filed after the quake, 98% have been settled. That speaks well for the industry,” said Jerry Davies, a spokesman for Personal Insurance Federation, which represents six of the state’s largest insurance carriers.

Many homeowners who are in dispute with their insurers have sued over their damage claims. Those lawsuits typically challenge an interpretation by some insurers that homeowners have one year after an earthquake to file a damage claim, even if the insurance company’s adjusters overlooked serious damage.

Consumer attorneys hope that a high court ruling on such a suit will plainly establish just how long a homeowner has to file a quake damage claim, thus simplifying future insurance disputes.

So many homeowners continue to fight their insurance companies over quake repair claims that a nonprofit support group called Community Assisting Recovery (CARe) has been formed to provide information and support. The group meets twice a week, attracting up to 25 residents at each meeting.

“It’s a safe place where people can vent their frustration and know that they are not alone,” said George Kehrer, an attorney who founded the group.

Times staff writers Jill Leovy and Barry Stavro contributed to this story.