Some Good Rose From Northridge Rubble

Along with the tales of irreparable sorrow, frustration and financial ruin, many Southern Californians are rising from the rubble of the Northridge earthquake four years ago to find that the disastrous rumbling has improved certain aspects of their lives.

Take the Rev. Joe L. Gates, who helplessly watched demolition crews raze his old brick Baptist church in the West Adams area after the quake left it unsalvageable. For 2 1/2 years his flock worshiped down the street at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, while his ministry struggled to raise funds for the rebuilding.

Now the Southern Missionary Baptist Church is back. And, with twice the square footage and a modern wood-frame chapel, Gates says it’s bigger and better than ever.

But he’s just starting to warm up to the irony that the earthquake may have been some warped kind of blessing in disguise.

“I didn’t see it that way before,” he said with a big laugh. “But in the end, I guess we are a little better off.”

Of course, Jan. 17, 1994, will always be marked as a day to mourn in Los Angeles. The quake killed 72 people and injured thousands. People were devastated. Businesses were drained of capital.

But amid all the bad news, silver linings have become visible.

Federal aid and insurance payouts have made buildings stronger, safer and prettier. “There is probably a better quality of housing stock out there now,” said real estate company owner Fred Sands.

More than $25 billion from federal aid and insurance payouts poured into the region after the quake, an unprecedented cash infusion that brought opportunity to whomever it touched.

Using the billions in homeowners’ insurance policy payouts, many people improved their homes while rebuilding them, said Lorraine Enriquez, spokeswoman for Farmers Insurance Group, which paid out $1.8 billion in claims.

Shear walls were added to strengthen exterior walls, chimneys made of wood and brick were replaced with concrete-covered steel, and wood-frame houses and apartments were bolted to their foundations. Such improvements should help these homes fare better in the next quake, Enriquez said.

The construction was a boon for contractors and workers. It brought steady work and high income to Doug Stokes, a masonry contractor in Los Angeles. “I did chimneys all year,” he said.

The changes can be seen in the bright colors and banners on apartments and condominiums in such hard-hit neighborhoods as Canoga Park, North Hills, Northridge, Reseda and Sherman Oaks, and the scores of homes with new roofs, chimneys and freshly landscaped yards.

“The neighborhood is a lot better than it was,” said Francisco Rabago, who manages an apartment building along a once-devastated stretch of Reseda Boulevard in Tarzana.

And the money reached more than homeowners.

On the Westside, after commuters endured two months with a closed Santa Monica Freeway, the interstate’s two collapsed bridges were rebuilt with a great deal more structural re-enforcement, said the California Department of Transportation.

“To the motorists, it looks the same,” said Russell Snyder, spokesman for Caltrans, “but the guts of it are different. It’s stronger and better.”

Commercial areas, too, have gotten face lifts.

“We would have much preferred never to have had an earthquake,” said Jeff Brain, owner of a real estate company in Sherman Oaks. “But now the buildings coming back are much nicer buildings. The community has a new look to it.”

The billions of dollars in disaster relief also engendered new social programs.

The San Fernando Valley became a top candidate for a variety of grant programs and government subsidies, even those technically unrelated to the quake.

Canoga Park, for example, will receive $3 million over the next few years from the city’s Targeted Neighborhoods Initiative, part of which will be used to renovate the Guadalupe Center, a neighborhood community center.

The West Valley has also seen some of its first government-subsidized, affordable housing developments since the Northridge earthquake.

McCormack, Baron & Associates offers one example. The St. Louis company took over five badly damaged apartment buildings after the earthquake, tearing down and rebuilding three and renovating the others.

Leveraging government relief money into private investment, the company completed 418 units from Canoga Park to Sherman Oaks.

“Our properties are better than they were before, and better than anything around them,” said McCormack’s Tony Salazar.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents Canoga Park, holds out the soon-to-be completed Madrid Theatre project as an example of the “major, lasting benefits of the earthquake.”

“Out of bad things come good things,” she said.

The $2.8-million live theater project will replace the X-rated Pussycat Theater, which was destroyed by the earthquake. Seeing the Pussycat in ruins “was the first time I smiled all day,” Chick recalled.

Federal earthquake recovery grants to improve streets, sidewalks, sewers and other infrastructure around the former General Motors plant in Van Nuys are helping transform that property into a retail center.

Similar grants also helped create an industrial site at Whiteman Airport, now home to Arc Machines Inc., a manufacturer of high-precision welding machines.

In San Fernando, federal earthquake recovery funds have helped launch an ambitious downtown revitalization program. Administrative services manager Saul Gomez said the program has already prompted one concern--a car dealership--to expand on San Fernando Road.

In Woodland Hills, the Promenade shopping mall has seen disappointment after the quake give way to glee, said spokesman Ken Stephens.

Although depriving the mall of its posh anchor, Saks Fifth Avenue, the quake ushered in a major movie theater chain on the Saks property, giving the Promenade a jump-start on competitors.

“At this point, quite honestly, the earthquake and its aftermath are viewed almost entirely in a positive light,” Stephens said.

Even public institutions severely crippled by the quake have found that they now have unprecedented leeway for renewal and innovation.

This fall, the 30-year-old Van Gogh Elementary School in Granada Hills, rebuilt with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, reopened with a wood-paneled auditorium and Internet hookups in every classroom.

At Cal State Northridge, despite lingering devastation, the earthquake “gave us an opportunity to rearrange space for academic needs . . . and upgrade buildings for technological needs,” said Art Elbert, vice president for administration and finance.

Some of the $330 million the campus is spending will add elements to the university that otherwise would never have existed: a new technology center, for one, and a community service center to promote volunteerism, Elbert said.

One of the most important legacies of the quake is the chance it afforded the city to prepare for the next one.

For scientists charged with predicting quake dangers, the Northridge temblor offered a vast new world of data that no computer model could replicate, said Thomas Henyey, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC.

Suddenly, instead of relying on theories and extrapolations of data from smaller quakes, scientists had real numbers. This makes for much more accurate models--and much better grant proposals.

“The earthquake freed up a lot more money,” Henyey said. After Northridge, the center received a total of $1.75 million in additional grants and redirected funds to bolster its studies of earthquake hazards, he said.

Out of these studies has already emerged the first generation of earthquake hazard maps.

For structural engineers, the quake stripped away ignorance, laying bare mile upon mile of construction flaws, said Karl Deppe, chief of the structural plan check division for the city of Los Angeles.

Each shattered wall and fallen ceiling panel offered a lesson to engineers who picked their way over wreckage, scribbling on note pads. They compiled a veritable encyclopedia of mundane but potentially life-saving new maxims about building safety.

The list is long: Joints in office buildings must be stronger; concrete walls must have roof supports; homes must be built on compacted soil; ceiling panels must be fastened in place; steel welds must be stronger.

Caltrans, which had begun seismically retrofitting its bridges after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, learned some lessons after Northridge. Columns had to be set deeper in the ground and with more reinforcing steel rods, said spokesman Snyder.

Also, engineers learned from collapsed portions of the Golden State and Antelope Valley Freeways that columns were generally too brittle. “One of the things that we learned was about the general properties of concrete and steel,” Snyder said.

The quake permitted families to buy houses at bargain prices, encouraged people to change jobs, start new ventures or simply rebuild and go on.

Ray Rich, a retired chiropractor, was almost ruined financially by a real estate deal that went sour in the recession. A last-minute quake-recovery loan saved him just as his savings had dwindled to almost nothing.

“Thank God the earthquake came,” said Rich, with only a touch of irony.

Rich also said that financial strains compelled him to work as a movie extra in the meantime. Today, at 76, he has discovered a new career, acting in commercials.

“My wife and I ask ourselves,” he said, “how we could be so blessed.”

Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this report.