Whittier Residents Rebuilding Lives 6 Months After the Quake

The earthquake that rocked Whittier at 7:42 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, shook the community to its very foundation. It shattered homes. It closed businesses. And, for many people, it changed their lives. Six months later, Whittier is still rebuilding.

The people who live there call it Earthquake Gulch--a picturesque stretch of Beverly Boulevard where residents spend weekends in work clothes repairing their once-elegant homes.

Many houses along the tree-shaded street are in sad shape--up on stilts, stripped down to their frames, missing windows and chimneys.

Empty. Depressing.

“In other places, I see people watering the lawn or kids playing. Everybody has forgotten about it until you come up here--where you can’t forget,” said homeowner Martha Celaya, 44.

But there will soon be a celebration on Beverly Boulevard, because after spending $50,000 and living for six months in a motor home parked in their back yard, the Celayas and their three children are moving back into their five-bedroom house.

‘It Can Be Done’

Seeing the repaired home, with its smooth white plaster walls and new bathroom fixtures, “has done wonders for the neighbors,” said Oscar Celaya, 44. “They know it can be done now.”

The Celayas, who have been cooking inside their house, sleeping outside in the motor home and taking showers at their neighbors’ homes since October, “are the toughest people I know,” said neighbor Ray Ramirez.

But things haven’t been so easy for Ramirez, either.

The earthquake caused $130,000 to $180,000 in damage to Ramirez’s 1920s-era home, which he and his family moved into six months before the earthquake.

“It was my wife’s dream house,” Ramirez said. “I call it a nightmare.”

Negotiations Continue

The Ramirezes and their two children are living in a three-bedroom apartment about a mile away while negotiations continue with contractors, their insurance company and federal loan officials.

To save money on demolition costs, Ramirez, 42, has spent almost every weekend since October painstakingly stripping cracked plaster from the walls, pulling up carpeting and compiling an ever-growing list of repairs to be made. “If I don’t come out here on the weekend, I get a guilt trip,” he said.

Ramirez thought he was safe because his house was covered by an earthquake insurance policy, which also pays for his apartment rent while the home is being rebuilt.

But the insurance company used what he thinks is a low and unrealistic damage estimate --$104,000--and after paying the deductible, Ramirez was notified that he would receive just $70,000.

Gutted, Alone

He plans to fight the insurance company. Ramirez may also have to increase his loan from the federal Small Business Administration from $20,000 to $30,000 as he discovers more damage. Meanwhile, the house sits, gutted and alone.

Ramirez takes a visitor on a tour, pointing out with bored familiarity where a chandelier once hung above a sweeping staircase and how the force of the temblor was so strong that it squeezed a steel drain cover from where it had been embedded in a concrete driveway. He hopes that repairs can begin in April.

“It’s gotten me down a few times,” he said. “It’s like having a wounded friend.”

A couple of houses down, George McCullen walked around in what had been his living room for 14 years. The entire interior of the home has been stripped down to its wooden frame.

Federal Loan

McCullen, 44, who let his earthquake insurance lapse a few years ago, took out an SBA loan to cover $80,000 in damage. McCullen, his wife and two sons are living in a rented house nearby. They hope work on the house can be finished by July.

“There have been moments of ‘Damn it. Why did this happen to me right now?’ ” McCullen said as he wiped sweat from his brow on a sunny Saturday morning. “I’d rather be fishing.”

Despite living for months in cramped quarters, hassling with contractors and loan agents and wondering if another temblor will start the process all over again, the people on Beverly Boulevard insist that they are the lucky ones.

“I’ve got something--other people had to completely leave the area,” Martha Celaya said.

“We’re lucky we had earthquake insurance,” Ramirez said.

“We’re lucky everybody was all right,” McCullen said.

And although the earthquakes may have cracked the foundations of their homes, it cemented their friendships.

“It’s the neighbors that have kept us here,” said Martha Celaya.

It’s a little claustrophobic. But Evelyn Gould says it’s better than going bankrupt.

Gould is an Uptown merchant who is working out of a mobile home, a move she did not have in mind after opening Village Needlecraft about two years ago.

She was among the first to move into one of 24 trailers the Whittier Uptown Assn. arranged as temporary quarters for businesses displaced by the earthquake. Now she is one of 10 businesses left in the so-called Trailer Plaza at Wardman Street and Bright Avenue, and is looking forward to finding a permanent place to rent.

“People don’t stroll through a parking lot like they do on the avenue,” said Gould, whose former location in the Lindley Building benefited from the foot traffic at the busy intersection of Greenleaf Avenue and Hadley Street.

Many merchants who rented the dark-brown, 60-foot units have vacated Trailer Plaza, either moving to other buildings or going out of business. Those still there include a jewelry store, a fitness center and a beauty salon.

“A number of them are now empty, which I think is wonderful,” said Marilyn Neece, executive director of the Uptown Assn. “That’s what they were for. They’re not meant to be a long-term solution.”

Gould, a slim and energetic 64, was able to recover most of the stock from her old shop and spoke to an SBA representative about relocation help. “They suggested I retire and see what I could get on Social Security,” she said, tossing her head in indignation.

Instead, she opted to pay $265 a month to rent the trailer and says the business is holding its own. Gould plans to stay in Trailer Plaza until she can find a reasonable place to rent--perhaps in the reconstructed Lindley Building.

“All my customers have been fantastic through this whole thing,” she said. “It has brought out a lot of the good in people.”

The crumbled buildings, the empty lots, the abandoned businesses--the $60 million in physical damage--haunt the Whittier residents trying to forget about the earthquake, a psychologist says.

“The basic laws of psychology say that a stimulus causes a response,” said Robert Butterworth, co-director of Contemporary Psychology Associates Inc. of Los Angeles. Earthquake damage is a stimulus: “When you see it, it reminds you and brings you back to that fear.”

For many who live near the Uptown district, where 342 homes were declared unsafe after the Oct. 1 earthquake, the temblor is a subject that just won’t go away.

“Everywhere I go, I wonder what I should do when an earthquake hits and plan what table to jump under,” said one resident.

There has been special concern about Whittier’s children. Last month, Butterworth advertised a free hot line with a recorded message to help parents whose children are suffering from earthquake anxiety. The first week, he received 100 calls from Southeast Los Angeles County; the next week, 60 more.

Butterworth said he was surprised by the number, but he thinks most children have settled down now.

“I’m finding that the kids that have problems now are the ones that had (emotional) problems before the earthquake,” Butterworth said. “It’s kind of like it triggered their own faults.”

The financial aftershocks from the Oct. 1 earthquake and smaller ones that followed are just now rippling through the coffers of City Hall and a local school district as officials report unexpected drops in sales tax revenue and student enrollment.

The Whittier City School District, which has lost 150 students since the earthquake, has asked the state Legislature for $214,000 to compensate for the enrollment drop.

Recent figures show sales tax revenue was down 10% for the quarter that included the normally lucrative Christmas shopping season.

“It was a very bad performance compared to the prior year,” said city Comptroller Irwin Bornstein. “Christmas quarters have almost always increased from year to year.”

The city collected $1.78 million in sales tax revenue during October, November and December, compared to $2 million in 1986, Bornstein said. Until the earthquake, 1987 revenues had been on the increase. For the quarter that included July, August and September, sales tax revenue was up 2.5%.

Budget officials had projected a 6% growth in sales tax revenue for the 1987-88 fiscal year, but “it doesn’t look like we’re going to meet that,” Bornstein said.

City Manager Thomas G. Mauk said the decline since October was caused by the earthquake. “We lost a lot of businesses,” he said, “and people in general were busy working on quake-related items and weren’t out shopping for hard goods.”

Mauk said it is too soon to tell what effect the unexpected shortfall will have on city operations, although he said cutbacks and spending freezes are possible. The 10% decline represented “an important, big chunk of money,” Mauk said.

Conlin Brother’s Sporting Goods--moved to the Whittier Quad Mall.

Ames Bookstore--relocated to Northern California.

Chiyomoto Japanese restaurant--closed, probably for good.

Greenleaf Avenue, the main drag of the Uptown Village business district, is a grim place these days. The earthquake forced the demolition of more than 30 buildings in the district, leaving behind gaps that make the street look “like the smile of a jack-o-lantern,” said Whittier resident Sharon Ramirez.

All told, 50 of the district’s 494 merchants have either relocated or gone out of business since Oct. 1, according to a recently completed study by the Whittier Area Research Center at Whittier College.

“You know, I looked at Uptown after the earthquake and felt sure it would come back,” said one resident. “Now I see all those empty spaces, and I’m not so sure anymore.”

Vacant Lots

Scaffolding still shelters some sidewalks, and vast walls loom above vacant lots dotted with chips of reddish brick. Windows are still boarded up and buildings are still fenced off, waiting for demolition or repair work to begin.

Even if the city is able to recruit developers to fill these gaps, City Manager Mauk acknowledged that it will probably be five years before Uptown is restored to pre-earthquake shape.

In the meantime, merchants fear that local shoppers will become disheartened by the apparent lack of progress and stop patronizing the area.

“I have to keep reminding myself of all those beautiful renderings of (planned) buildings,” said Marilyn Neece, executive director of the Uptown Assn. “It upsets me that the public really hasn’t had the opportunity to see that. . . . We’re such a vital community, but this is a hard hurdle to overcome.”

Ground will be broken in the next month for the Theisen Building, an office and retail complex one block off Greenleaf, and construction is scheduled to start on two other buildings in a few months.

In the meantime, the city is waiting for a Pasadena consultant to complete a market and design study of the Uptown that can be used to recruit developers. The city has also been allotted $625,000 from the state and federal governments for public improvements to the business district, said Assistant City Manager Robert Griego.

Goad to Change

Those who look on the bright side say the earthquake is prodding Uptown toward change that might otherwise never have happened, such as improving parking and bringing night life to an area that is generally deserted after dark.

“That’s always been a problem for us because we’re not a mall. We can’t tell people to stay open until 9,” said Lane Langford, owner of Bookland and president of the Uptown Assn. “But with the increased rents (because of scarcity of space in the area), people are going to have to stay open late and on Saturday and Sunday to pay the rent.”

The redevelopment process may also bring new kinds of businesses to Uptown, said Stephen Overturf, director of the Whittier Area Research Center. Overturf’s study of the market demand in Whittier showed that the city is a prime location for men’s and boys’ clothing stores, building materials stores, bars, movie theaters and computer firms, among others.

The marquee is still dark, the foyer fenced off--but the owners of Whittier’s only X-rated theater promise that its film projectors will roll again as soon as repairs are complete in a few months.

“We will reopen,” a spokesman said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

The Pussycat Theater, part of a statewide adult movie house chain owned by Walnut Properties, is in one of the most heavily damaged blocks of Greenleaf Avenue in the Uptown district.

Whittier has spent 10 years and $326,000 in court costs trying to shut down the Pussycat. Right after Walnut bought the theater in 1977, the City Council passed a zoning ordinance that in effect would force the 1930s-era theater out of the Uptown area. The city lost the last court battle and has appealed to the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Asked whether strained relations with the city have delayed reopening of the Pussycat, the theater spokesman said: “I’ve seen no animosity at all.”

Before the earthquake, Richard Hubinger’s job as head of the Whittier Building and Safety Department was a busy one but not exactly high profile. His staff issued building permits, inspected additions to houses, that sort of thing.

But in a matter of days, his office became one of the hot spots in town. More than 5,000 anxious homeowners and merchants, wondering exactly what those cracks in the wall meant, wanted their property inspected by the city. Right away.

“People who used to chase us off with a shotgun were begging us to come to their property,” Hubinger said.

Whittier’s four building inspectors, with help from more than 30 inspectors loaned to the city from throughout Southern California, tackled the list, getting through it in less than a month. In their wake, the inspectors left some property owners relieved, some depressed about the red-and-white “unsafe” signs on their door, and some doubtful.

“Surprisingly, the most arguments we had were from people who didn’t believe the inspector who said the building was safe,” Hubinger recalled.

Since the earthquake, the department has issued more than 1,600 repair permits for projects such as replacing fireplaces, repairing foundations and fixing roofs.

“I anticipate there will be another surge,” Hubinger said. “People are waiting to get the money to rebuild, and waiting for business to drop off a little bit to get a decent price from a contractor. Right now, it’s definitely a seller’s market.”

The night after the earthquake, there was an unusual event on the normally placid streets of Uptown Whittier. A protest march wound its way down Hadley Street toward the Lindley Building, the oldest commercial building in town.

“Save our buildings! Save our buildings!” the group shouted to reporters and anyone else who would listen. Within half an hour, City Hall got in on the act, and though the Lindley Building ended up being torn down, the group extracted a promise from the city to rebuild the unreinforced masonry structure, which had stood on that corner since 1888.

“It was the sudden realization that ‘Hey, we’ve been sitting here complacently looking at these wonderful old buildings, and they might be torn down,’ ” said Jane Gothold, who took part in the march.

The activism did not stop there. A few weeks later, the newly formed Whittier Conservancy won its court battle to stop bulldozers from razing the 1920-era Whittier Theater, still in legal limbo. And last month, the activists persuaded a judge to delay demolition of the Harvey Apartments, another 1888 building that eventually was razed because of earthquake damage.

In addition to defending historic buildings, the 50-member conservancy has become involved in local politics, sending questionnaires to City Council candidates requesting their views on preservation and other issues.

Gothold, 53, treasurer of the conservancy, says the refreshing thing about the group is that most of its members are young.

“Most people think anybody interested in history is an old person,” she said. “This time, it’s the young people saying: ‘Wait a minute. You’re taking away our roots.’ ”