4 Years Later, Many Still Shaken by Quake

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 due to 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. Indeed, some of the most vexing problems remain--problems that may become the quake’s legacies for another four years or longer.

Consider:

* Due to 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 commercial buildings have not been repaired, due to 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 that the city has required to ensure the structures will withstand future quakes.

* 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 still meets twice a week.

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

* Many people continue to suffer post-quake emotional trauma. One San Fernando Valley psychiatrist said 5% to 10% of his new clients suffer from anxiety or sleeping disorders triggered by the quake.

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

The 6.7-magnitude temblor killed 72 people, injured nearly 12,000 others 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 surpasses 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 from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “But you never really erase them.”

Although Kyser and other economists believe most of the jobs that were lost to the quake have been regained, they say many companies that survived 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.

The irony of the quake is that it did not give Los Angeles a reprieve from quakes in the near future.

“Studies of major earthquakes show they tend to cluster in time and place,” said Thomas Henyey, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC.

Henyey compares the stresses that cause a large earthquake to an elephant on a trampoline: The elephant’s weight causes the trampoline to bulge dangerously in the middle. The supports creak, the rubber bands stretch and fray until they finally snap, causing a quake. That relieves stress on that particular band, but it may take a dozen more bands’ snapping--that is, several more big quakes--before the whole contraption collapses, he said.

It may be 40 or 100 years before the region is hit by the next big quake, Henyey said, but the probability that one will happen eventually has not lessened.

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

More than 90% of the housing units damaged by the quake have been repaired, thanks mostly to special loan programs offered by federal and city government.

But public buildings and commercial structures have proven to be a more stubborn problem.

Because of political vacillation and bureaucratic red tape, repairs on nearly two-thirds of the approximately 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 predict that the final cost will increase to $350 million.

Repairs on the City Hall annex in Van Nuys have only recently begun and are not expected to be completed until spring of 2000.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided only two months ago on a plan to replace thebadly 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 still need repair and about half of the trailers remain. About 25% of classes is still taught in the trailers.

Because of the high cost of repairs, government officials are still 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 damage. But as of last month, the owners of 20 commercial buildings--including the Westside Pavilion--had yet to complete the required inspections or repairs, according to city officials.

A spokesman for the 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 Wednesday 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 are delayed due to 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. But officials at the retirement home have yet to reach an agreement with FEMA on funding for a replacement building.

Meanwhile, 45 of the patients formerly housed in the building have lived for the past four years 12 miles away at the North Hollywood Medical Center.

Bob Roberts of Northridge hopes the building can be replaced soon so that his 93-year-old mother can return to the Reseda facility. He said the medical center is nice but doesn’t provide all the amenities of the Jewish Home for the Aging.

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 prey on homeowners--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 Fairfax-area legal clinic.

Even four years after the quake, he said that 30% of the home improvement scams that his office gets involve quake repair swindles.

Often, Duran said, the contractor will offer to retrofit an aging home only to “discover” hidden damage that dramatically increases the cost of repairs.

Duran said he recently worked on the case of an 80-year-old Compton woman who was the victim of a contractor who charged $10,000 to fix her “tilting” home.

To convince the woman that her house had slipped off its foundation and was leaning to one side, Duran said the contractor walked the woman to the front yard and told her to lean to one side so she could see the tilt in the structure.

“The quake is so fresh in everybody’s mind that they believe a lot of these claims,” he said.

In fact, the most recent quake in Chino Hills on Monday is expected to entice a new wave of scam artists to target homeowners for retrofitting work, said C. Lance Barnett, registrar of the Contractors State License Board, which prosecutes dishonest contractors.

“Any disaster that they can use to monger fear, they will use,” he said.

Still, many continue to suffer from the emotional scars of the quake.

Richard Ferman, an Encino psychiatrist who specializes in children’s emotional problems, said 10% of the children and 5% of the adults who now come into his office for help suffer some effects from the quake.

The children suffer sleeping disorders and the adults have anxiety disorders that prompt some to turn to alcohol or drug abuse, Ferman said.

“It’s fading, but it certainly isn’t gone for everyone,” he said.

Recovery is difficult for Raynard and dozens of other homeowners who continue to fight their insurance companies over quake repair claims.

At Raynard’s home, the quake sent cracks through the walls and ceilings and shook loose asbestos from the acoustical 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.

“When they came down and cleaned out the house, it looked like it had been raped,” she said. “I just sat in the middle of the house and bawled.”

In recent months, a mysterious pain has developed in Raynard’s right leg, which she attributes to the stress. In an attempt to forget her problems, she said, she tries to lose herself in books, “any book I can get a hold of, except for romance novels.”

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

She believes 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 for 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.”

Unlike Raynard, many other homeowners who are still in dispute with their insurers have sued over their damage claims. Those suits typically challenge a controversial interpretation by some insurers that homeowners have one year after an earthquake to file a damage claim, even if the insurance company’s own 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 the homeowners information and support in their plight. The group still 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.

Because of a protracted dispute with his insurance company, David Adkins, a photographer for the city of Los Angeles, is still living with huge cracks in his Van Nuys house. The structure is so weak from the damage that, when he pushes on the wall of his back bedroom, the front of the house shakes.

But he doesn’t dare repair the home for fear that his insurance company won’t reimburse him for the cost.

“It’s a little bit unnerving living in that house,” he said. “What happens when another earthquake comes?”

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

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TOMORROW: The surprising benefits of the Northridge earthquake.

* FEMA: Lasting trauma common, A29

* BRIEFING: Repairs by ZIP Code, B2