Quake Block Party Is a Happy Anniversary

Five years after the Northridge earthquake rousted everybody on Nashville Street out of bed before dawn, it did it again Sunday.

This time, though, neighbors along the cul-de-sac in Chatsworth got up voluntarily to toast their good fortune at 4:31 a.m.--the precise moment the earthquake struck on Jan. 17, 1994.

After the quake hit “we were all out sitting on the curb in front of our houses waiting for the sun to come up. We’re doing the same thing now, except the curb is new and the houses are new,” said Chuck Clark as he popped open a bottle of champagne.

Like much of the San Fernando Valley, the area around Nashville Street was devastated by the 6.7-magnitude temblor. Thirty-seven of the neighborhood’s 44 homes were left uninhabitable.

But nobody was killed or seriously hurt. And after their houses were repaired or rebuilt, all but three families returned to the cul-de-sac.

That’s why two-dozen residents set their alarm clocks so they could gather Sunday at 4:31 a.m. After counting down the seconds to the precise moment the quake hit, they raised their glasses to salute the positive aspects of the earthquake.

“We have good neighbors,” explained Randy Cressall, whose family lived in a frontyard tent for two weeks after the quake. “The fellowship and friendship that came after the earthquake was unbelievable.”

On Sunday, residents could laugh at what they went through in the first terrifying moments after the quake--and during the frustrating months that followed.

Barbara Koteles remembered she was in the kitchen getting a glass of grapefruit juice when it struck.

“Everything just exploded. Boom. Things came flying out of the refrigerator,” she said. “The fireplace caved into the den. The whole side of the house went. I had to make my way back upstairs to get my daughter Jennifer. We got some blankets and got out on the lawn.”

Elaine Frawley told of how a wall collapsed on her and husband Kevin as they lay in bed. When they pulled themselves free from the rubble and made their way outside, neighbors were already pounding on doors to check on victims.

Kim LaVere, now 14, remembered a neighbor from across the street coming in with a flashlight to help her family.

“We couldn’t get to my daughters,” explained her mother, Linda LaVere. “The garage was leaning. Furniture was blocking the doors.”

John Orton hurried house-to-house along the cul-de-sac turning off gas. Orton asked Marilyn Saake for permission to break down a gate to get to her shut-off valve. She said yes.

Clark, an electronic engineer, recounted how he picked his way back inside his wrecked house to search for his wife Anne’s cat. A heavy cabinet lay smashed where the cat had been sleeping.

“I lifted it up and felt underneath and found a cold, furry thing. I thought, ‘Oh, no--it killed the cat.’ But it turned out it was just one of my wife’s furry slippers.”

On his way out, Clark grabbed a few unbroken bottles of champagne. Back outside, he poured it for neighbors who had nothing else to drink as they huddled on the curb.

“And down the street, we were drinking Scotch,” laughed Jim Belden, a retired real estate broker who had fled his wrecked house in his underwear.

Wife Nedia Belden said that the impact of the disaster was starting to sink in when the headlights of a car suddenly illuminated the cul-de-sac.

“We heard ‘plunk, plunk, plunk.’ It was the L.A. Times deliveryman.” she said.

Added Bill Saake, an insurance executive: “We told him unless there was something in there about an earthquake, he was delivering old news.”

As aftershocks continued to rattle the Valley, many on the street gathered at Harvey Epstein’s place each evening, cooking their meals on a barbecue grill.

“I must have had eight or 10 tents on my frontyard for six or seven days,” recalled Epstein, a lawyer. “It was amazing how we all pulled together. Believe it or not, we had a good time.”

Keeping that good humor would prove to be a challenge in the months that followed, homeowners at Sunday’s quake party agreed.

Bill LaVere discovered he had $300,000 damage to his house. Seven months before the quake he had canceled his earthquake insurance.

“I’d figured, ‘What are the odds we would ever have enough damage to meet the deductible?’ ” he said. “Thank goodness for the Small Business Administration (loan).”

Vicki Briskman became a nomad after the quake. “I went to my brother’s in Agoura the first night. Then I spent three months in a motel. And then six months in an apartment.”

The repair job to Tina Margulis’ home took longer than expected, too. That’s because one workman almost burned it down.

“The plumber forgot to turn off the gas. He tried to put his finger in the pipe to stop it but couldn’t. It exploded and blew the roof off,” she said.

“The plumber fell through the ceiling onto the bathroom floor. And then all the drywall and replastering we’d done for six months was ruined by water from the firemen who came to put out the fire.”

And things are still not back together for Randy Cressall and his wife, Julie. Repairs to sticking windows last fall revealed that hidden beams in their house were broken in the earthquake. They have moved into a rental house down the street while theirs is rebuilt.

“Being the last to fix our house isn’t something we want to be known for,” laughed Cressall, who owns an automotive company. “But this is where we want to be.”

Nodding in agreement was 17-year-old Ashley Cohen. She said she almost didn’t get up for Sunday’s neighborhood party.

“At first I thought it was horrible to have a celebration of the Northridge quake,” she said.

“But now I understand why people are here. People are celebrating a new beginning.”