For Many, Quake’s Cloud Has Silver Lining

Maybe it’s the year-round sunshine that discourages brooding. Or maybe Angelenos are just tougher than anyone thought.

Whatever the reason, four years after the Northridge earthquake, it’s easy to find people whose view of the disaster ranges from nonchalance to gratitude.

Take Ray Rich, a retired chiropractor, who 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.

In this city’s memory, Jan. 17, 1994, will always be marked a day of grief. Seventy-two people died because of the quake. Thousands more were injured. People were ruined. Businesses were drained of capital.

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

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.

Many local economists judge the economy stronger now than it was in the recessionary years before the quake. Jobs have surged. The housing market is heating up. Construction has returned.

“I think basically, the earthquake is behind us,” said UCLA demographer Nancy Bolton.

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

Using the billions in homeowners’ insurance policy payouts, many homeowners 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 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.

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.

After the earthquake, “the city discovered the west San Fernando Valley,” said Ellen Michiel, executive director of the West Valley Community Development Corp.

The 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.

Two new domestic violence shelters have sprung up at the west and east ends of the Valley.

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 company, based in St. Louis, Mo., 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 what she calls 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,” recalled Chick.

Federal earthquake recovery grants to improve streets, sidewalks, sewers and other infrastructure around the former General Motors plant in Van Nuys are helping to 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.

While depriving the mall of its posh anchor, Saks Fifth Avenue, the quake also 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,” said Stephens.

Even public institutions severely crippled by the quake have found 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 long-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.

But perhaps one of the greatest 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 have already emerged the first generation of earthquake hazard maps.

“We may still have time on our side to prepare,” he said.

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 lifesaving 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--and more.

Such discoveries, to some extent, have been incorporated into new building and safety requirements, although many are voluntary and change has been slow, Deppe said.

Citizens, too, have applied valuable lessons from the quake.

Neighborhood Watch groups boomed in the ensuing months, and new community organizations formed. “People saw how important it was to know their neighbors, to keep an eye on each other,” said Councilwoman Chick.

Even churches were full--for a while, said newly appointed Bishop Gerald Wilkerson, Roman Catholic leader of the San Fernando Valley.

Some of these community-building efforts have been lasting. In Sherman Oaks, the Sherman Oaks Town Council, formed to respond to the quake, still meets. The group has gone from helping with insurance claims to planting trees.

“Sherman Oaks has bounced back tremendously,” said the group’s president, Michael Goodrich.

At the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, quake-relief efforts have bloomed into a full-scale social service program providing 6,000 people yearly with food and job training, said Kimberly Schuler Hall, director of community support services for the council.

At the grass-roots level, the quake permitted many families to buy houses at rock-bottom prices and encouraged people to change jobs, start new ventures or simply rebuild and go on.

Rich, the retiree whose finances were saved by an earthquake recovery loan, said financial pressure 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 how we could be so blessed,” he said.

Ron Clary, a Canoga Park lawyer, fixed up his battered office and went back to work after the quake. He said the disaster only reinforced a kind of stubborn devotion to L.A. among those who love this city’s chaos and diversity.

“You’re talking to the people who stayed, after all, the fools who will never leave L.A.,” he said.

This, perhaps, is one of the quake’s most lasting and least-visible effects, said economist Jack Kyser, who believes the city emerged from the quake with its robust spirit intact--and strengthened.

“The fact is, people here are tough,” he said. “They are gritty, tough people.”

Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this article.