2 Years After the Jolt : Communities and Residents Still Recovering From 6.7 Quake

For some hapless Ventura County residents, the Northridge earthquake never stopped.

Two years later, they still struggle to steady the shifting soil, repair crumbling homes, resolve dizzying piles of paperwork, and regain some hint of normal life from the debris and confusion left by 30 seconds of violent shaking.

Shop windows in some Fillmore businesses remain shuttered and dark. They wait for insurance settlements, federal loans and other financial saviors to come through for repairs.

Workers have finally begun mending the shattered brick business district of tiny Piru--but only after nearly two years of neglect and bureaucratic paper shuffling forced some displaced businesses to leave for good.

And in Simi Valley, the restless earth still sags and buckles beneath some homes in the hard-hit east end. Hairline cracks creep across plaster, and fissured concrete floors yawn wider by the week as the sandy soil below continues to settle.

Dora Washington can hardly bear to look at her wrecked Sabina Circle house. Soil problems and new government regulations pushed the rebuilding costs to six figures--and out of reach. The bank is about to foreclose.

“Same old, same old,” she said, fighting back tears as she looked at the shattered sidewalk. “Status quo from Jan. 17th.”

But there are strong signs of progress.

Many of the city’s damaged stores and industrial plants have bootstrapped themselves back into business.

Repairs on many homes are under way or complete. And the city building office has signed 3,827 permits for earthquake repairs to date, pumping $70 million into the building industry, much of it to local contractors.

In Fillmore’s devastated business district this week, sawdust and the whine of power tools fill the air.

Shops and apartment buildings are springing up along Central Avenue, where the first, worst tremor left rubble and despair. More than half the businesses are repaired, and nearly 70% of the homes, city officials said.

And work has begun on an $886,000 project to repair the 1915-vintage Towne Theater, long considered the jewel in Fillmore’s downtown crown. Groundbreaking is set for noon today.

Builder David Smallwood looks down onto Central Avenue from his building’s half-finished top floor.

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From there, he can see $10 million worth of construction work shaping up along Central Avenue--work crews framing new apartments with two-by-fours, and laying coats of fresh tar and paper onto a newly built roof.

“This town really does pull together,” marveled Smallwood, construction superintendent for the $1-million block of apartments and stores being built by his company, Walker Development. “We always call Fillmore the last small town in America, and that’s because we work together.”

Fillmore could easily have been ruined by the damage done to its all-important business district. But quick action by city officials shored up displaced businesses, throwing up a hodgepodge of temporary metal buildings to house them.

Yet some complain that lack of visibility and foot traffic has hurt their income during the two years they have toiled in what merchants know as “the trailers” and “the tent.”

“The number of people coming to our business has decreased drastically,” said Daniela Hurtado, who with her family owns Daniel’s Boutique. “If we had to stay here for much longer, I don’t think we would be able to survive.”

Hank Carrillo, president of the Fillmore Chamber of Commerce, said the problem is that people do not know where the merchants are.

“People come into town, and they don’t know that any business is operating in a tent,” he said. “They go where they can see.”

Construction will not be finished on the new Fillmore City Hall--which was to have served as temporary store space for the displaced merchants--until July.

Merchants must move out of the temporary quarters by March 31, when the tents and trailers will be dismantled.

But City Manager Roy Payne said many of the new buildings along Central Avenue will be ready for tenants by then.

Meanwhile, Fillmore is proceeding with plans to replace two quake-fractured water reservoirs with a $2.5-million steel tank, and to widen and improve the edges of California 126 to accommodate new businesses.

“I’m real pleased and encouraged with the progress that we’ve made,” Payne said Tuesday. “We’ve been able to keep the recovery at an accelerated pace, and in 1996, we’re going to see the results of the last two years’ efforts really materialize.

“And Fillmore will start looking like it did before the earthquake,” he said. “The scaffolding will be down, and the signs of earthquake devastation will hopefully be removed from our eyes, if not our minds.”

A similar rebirth has gone on in Simi Valley.

Large employers such as Whittaker Electronics quickly leveraged themselves out of the rubble and back into business on crash diets of insurance payouts, U. S. Small Business Administration loans and round-the-clock repairs.

Others are struggling along.

City planners are drafting a revitalization design for the Tapo Street business corridor, which suffered from the destruction of two stores.

The quake-ravaged Pic ‘N’ Save building was razed last year.

And the wracked Sears Outlet store next door remained untouched after the earthquake--until an arsonist torched the interior and destroyed the building’s chances of being rebuilt.

The building’s owners are still searching for a new tenant, who would help pay to bulldoze the site and rebuild.

But until then, neighboring shops and restaurants claim that the eyesore and the two missing stores are killing their walk-through business.

Nappy’s Restaurant--after 25 years in the same plaza with the Sears Outlet--finally closed for lack of business.

Meanwhile, Simi Valley residents are picking their way through paperwork and permits for rebuilding uninhabitable houses--while trying to fend off foreclosure.

For Mike and Marcela Hernandez, time has run out.

The Veterans Administration, which held the mortgage on the couple’s quake-ruined Sabina Circle house, transferred the loan to a different servicing agency. Two weeks ago, the agency foreclosed.

Faced with a six-digit price tag for stabilizing the soil beneath the house and a law requiring them to jack it up on 6-foot stilts because it is within newly drawn flood-plain boundaries, the Hernandezes just walked away.

But not before leaving a bitter kiss-off in their fractured living room:

A teddy bear effigy hangs from the ceiling by a noose, and anti-V. A. messages are spray-painted on the walls. “V. A. unwilling to work w/earthquake victims!!!” reads one. “Thanks V. A. for nothing,” says another, capped with an obscenity.

“I just wish they knew what they have done,” Marcela Hernandez said sourly.

In fact, the whole lower end of Sabina Circle--where homeowners cannot rebuild until the quake-shifted soil beneath their homes is tamped down and stabilized--is waiting for relief.

Rich Stevens hopes for a miracle infusion of cash so that he can mend his own cracked foundation and fix the house next door that he wants to resume renting out.

“What I want is the city, the state or the federal government to [buy] us out of here and turn this whole place into a park,” he said. But Stevens admitted wistfully, such a rescue will probably never come.

But the Sabina Circle residents are in the minority, City Manager Mike Sedell said. He said about 80% of the city has been repaired from the ruins left by the magnitude 6.7 tremor.

“In a community of this size, there will always be more to be done,” he said. “However, I think that this community has done very well to come back from the devastation that it suffered, in the time that it’s come back.”

Meanwhile, two years after the earthquake wracked the hamlet of Piru, an $844,000 repair project has finally begun to shore up the badly damaged business district.

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“We’re excited about the renovations,” said Al Gaitan, head of the Piru Neighborhood Council. “It has been a long and slow process, but now we think things will be fixed and the town will be better than it ever was.”

With money from the California Historical Preservation Society and the federal Economic Development Administration, roofs are being rebuilt, and brick walls lashed together with steel and fresh mortar.

Workers are refurbishing the old Citizens State Bank building in hopes that the county can lure the bank to return, said James B. Becker, senior administrative analyst with Ventura County. The bank once anchored the business district, cashing paychecks for hundreds of farm workers. But the earthquake shattered the tiny brick building.

“Our goal is to bring the town back to what it looked like in the 1910s and 1930s,” Becker said.

Restored to its original glory, Piru could once again be used as a set for TV and movie productions, and as the end-of-the-line depot for a tourist train running through Santa Paula and Fillmore, he said.

“I think it will enhance our image and make the community look like what it used to be,” Gaitan said. “It will also be good for the morale of the community--the town has looked too depressing for too long.”

Times staff writer Christina Lima contributed to this story.