SHERMAN OAKS : Area’s Damage Called a Well-Kept Secret

Although no community along Ventura Boulevard’s 17-mile stretch through the San Fernando Valley escaped serious damage in last week’s temblor, few were hit as hard as Sherman Oaks.

Fire-gutted restaurants and stores dot the trendy community known as the “Melrose of the Valley,” serving as both a reminder of the disaster behind and the recovery ahead.

Several shopping malls remain closed this week, including Fashion Square, where one floor of a Bullock’s department store collapsed onto the floor below.

“Sherman Oaks is devastated,” said Jeff Brain, a board member and past president of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve got burned-out buildings, displaced tenants and not a whole lot of places to move them. It’s going to take awhile to recover.”

Residents were particularly hard-hit; dozens of “red-tagged” or condemned apartment buildings line residential streets along the busy thoroughfare.

“It’s the best-kept secret in the world, how hard we’ve been hit in Studio City and Sherman Oaks,” City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said in a recent interview as he watched rescue workers search for a quake victim buried in the rubble of what was once a majestic home in nearby Studio City.

Yaroslavsky said that while damage to apartment buildings in his district was not so dramatic as that at the collapsed Northridge Meadows apartments on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge, the destruction in Sherman Oaks would create many of the same problems.

“We’ve got a mass evacuation going on in Sherman Oaks,” he said. “Whether a building falls down or is condemned because of a crack in the wall, people are going to be displaced.”

It was a house collapse in Sherman Oaks that claimed the quake’s youngest victim. Five-year-old Amy Tyre-Vigil was found buried in a pile of stucco, tile and glass after her home slid down a hillside in the violent temblor.

“I think it’s safe to say that Sherman Oaks will never be the same,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “With the economy, inadequate earthquake insurance and a lack of financing, it could be years before these areas are rebuilt.”