Simi Valley Nearly 100% Recovered From the Shaking

Just over the Oak Ridge Mountains from Fillmore, this city also shuddered through the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Mobile homes toppled from foundations, the second floor of the police station crumbled and fireplaces tumbled to the quivering earth.

Simi Valley incurred an estimated $400 million in damage--the most of any Ventura County city.

Hardest hit were the homes and businesses in the east end of town, a few miles from the earthquake’s Northridge epicenter.

About 11,330 buildings were damaged. Of those, 175 were red-tagged as unsafe to enter and 822 were yellow-tagged for restricted use. Another 10,000 were damaged but still habitable, said Gaddis Farmer, a Simi Valley building official.

“In my view, we’re about 99% recovered or more,” Farmer said. “I think only two or three residences remain red-tagged and no commercial units are still red-tagged. From the public’s standpoint, this city is fully recovered.”

Some public works repairs--including replacement of a water tank--are not complete. But the city’s biggest emblem of recovery is next door to City Hall. It’s the $13-million, state-of-the-art police station opened last year.