He Does Windows : Business Booms for Northridge Glass Installer

These are crazy days for Bob Dunn, the glass man of Northridge.

His two crews have been replacing bedroom windows, sliding glass doors, picture windows, storefront windows--windows, windows, windows--from 7 in the morning until 8 at night. He cannot keep up with the messages on his answering machine. He is suddenly one of the most popular people in town.

Dunn owns Bullseye Glass & Mirror in Northridge. Really. That’s the name. Bullseye, as in epicenter. As in broken glass everywhere. So who ya gonna call?

Bullseye.

“Before the earthquake, on an average day, I might install six or seven windows,� said Dunn. “I hardly had any calls on Monday. I think people were just trying to clean up. They were putting plywood up. On Tuesday, they all went, ‘Oh, wow, we’ve got to get our windows fixed.’ �

Dunn, whose business is small compared to some of the big glass companies in the San Fernando Valley, got more than 100 calls on Tuesday--some of them from property managers reporting 10, 20, 50 broken windows. His three workers are installing about 40 windows a day. More calls streamed in Wednesday. And each day, he has fallen a little more behind.

“I’ve dealt with windstorms, with the riots, with fires, with all kinds of emergencies,� he said. “But this is 100 times worse than all of them.�

And through it all, Dunn has learned something about how people are coping with the quake.

“People are taking it in stride,� he said.

He plays back the answering machine.

“We need six or seven windows,� a man says matter-of-factly. “Uh, we have some broken windows,� says another. “I have a window broke in the living room. I hope you’re not too busy.� “Call us back or just come over. We have a couple of windows and a glass door we need fixed before the rain comes.� “Hi, will you have a chance to possibly fix a window today, or tomorrow, or, uh, Friday?�

Almost to the person, the voices are calm, soft, as if they hate to impose on Bob Dunn’s busy life.

Dunn is empathetic. Half of the glass in his shop shattered at 4:31 Monday morning. He is thankful that two crates of sheet glass that arrived on Friday had not yet been unpacked and thus were unscathed.

His own home suffered more than $10,000 in structural damage from the earthquake. Sections of the ceiling collapsed. The chimney is leaning awkwardly. The patio gazebo was shaken to the ground. And yes, there is broken glass.

But Dunn has not had time to work on his own place, or even to watch television coverage of the earthquake damage. He has been too busy.

One of his calls on Wednesday was to King’s Burger on Reseda Boulevard. Inside, the quake’s damage was still evident despite two days of cleanup: congealed, slippery grease had splashed onto the floor from the deep-fryers. The salad bar had toppled over. And there were, of course, the broken windows.

Dunn walked straight to the boarded-up window frames, measured them and gave brothers Peter and George Kalivas his estimate: $966. That’s $7 per square foot for quarter-inch tempered glass, installed.

*

We can get to it in four or five days, Dunn said. The brothers Kalivas shrugged. Gotta have windows.

Dunn is not surprised that entire glass-sheathed buildings--flash-cube buildings--can survive an earthquake, while other windows come crashing down. It’s in the engineering. Or maybe the broken glass wasn’t tempered, he says. Tsk tsk. Or the entire structure was wrenched, twisting the window from its frame. Of course, there is another possibility.

“Maybe it’s just fate,� Dunn shrugs.