FRIDAY REPORT : Ignoring the Inevitable : The 1994 Northridge earthquake touched off a surge of interest in emergency preparedness. But today, given human nature, little remains but good intentions.

Delivering an impact that knocked her pictures off walls and sent bookcases tumbling, the 1994 Northridge earthquake was pure trauma for Janine Perez.

A block wall collapsed at the Santa Clarita house where she lived, the gas line broke and her boyfriend was almost trapped in a room because the door was blocked by fallen debris.

“I was scared,” said Perez, who is grateful that they escaped with no injuries.

After enduring days of no gas, no electricity and no water, Perez stocked up at the time on food and water and thought about the importance of preparing earthquake kits for her home and car and securing heavy objects to keep them from falling.

Five years later, she is still just thinking about it.

“I’m lazy. I know that I have to do it,” said Perez, 27, who works in human resources and now lives in another Santa Clarita house. “It’s not on my priority of things to do.”

Perez is far from alone in Southern California. Experts say that the majority of residents in this quake-prone region have shown little more than a lackadaisical attitude toward preparing themselves and their homes for impending temblors, whether failing to keep first-aid supplies handy or not anchoring bookcases to the wall.

“The pattern we’ve seen historically is that immediately after an earthquake, for about six months, people get really interested,” said Peggy Brutsche, director of disaster services for the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross. “Then it just tapers off. Other concerns start to become more important in other people’s lives again.”

For the last three years, the Red Cross has offered free earthquake safety courses to the public. But response has been fairly low, Brutsche said, and occasionally classes have had to be canceled because so few people attended.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department found a similar pattern. After the magnitude 6.7 Northridge quake, thousands of people either inquired about or enrolled in survival training or preparedness classes, said Capt. Steve Martin. But now, inquiries have dropped to about 200 a month.

“It’s kind of human nature,” Martin said. “If it doesn’t happen for a long time, you don’t think about it.” Even the horrific death toll in the recent quake in Turkey has not prompted much reaction, he said.

“Something in another country like that with mass devastation--people can’t fathom something like that,” Martin said.

Surveys conducted from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s by UCLA’s Institute for Social Science Research found that people are more likely to do easy things such as store water and canned goods and buy a flashlight, said Linda Bourque, professor of public health and associate director of UCLA’s Center for Public Health and Disaster Relief.

Hazard mitigation is usually undertaken by people who are older, have children and own their own home, she said.

What’s more, families with fewer resources tend to be less prepared, said Kimberley Shoaf, research director for the UCLA center. “The result is that it is sometimes harder for those same families to recover from the quake because of difficulty replacing things,” Shoaf said.

If anything is prompting preparation for emergencies, it is fear of a worldwide technological collapse on New Year’s Day. Several Southland earthquake preparation supply businesses sell the same survival kits for quakes and for millennium doom.

The kits usually consist of food, water, flashlights and first-aid supplies. More elaborate ones include camping equipment such as stoves and portable radios. Prices range from $16.95 to about $200.

At Major Surplus and Survival, a Gardena emergency supply store, about half of the customers want Y2K supplies, said store manager Fred Morris, who believes many have a “head-in-the-sand” approach when it comes to earthquake preparedness.

Seismic retrofitting businesses report a continuing stream of customers for such work as foundation bolting. Much of that work is prompted by the lure of lower property insurance rates, according to Ed Silvis’ Seismic Safety, based in Pasadena.

In other areas of personal quake preparation, Southern Californians may be so overwhelmed with warnings and information that they do not know where to start, said April Kelcy, a consultant at Earthquake Solutions, a disaster preparedness business in Pasadena.

Diane Davis of Arcadia, who attended one of Kelcy’s seminars, found the guidance helpful in figuring out which survival products she needed and how to bolt down televisions, computers and other appliances.

“I feel very good about having made a really good start,” said Davis, who has seen few of her friends making such preparations. “It seems to me that there are some people that are being too casual about it, and I would err on the side of being overprepared.”

The casual attitudes disappoint Brutsche of the Red Cross. “I think most people don’t realize that there really are things they can do that will significantly decrease their chances of being injured or losing a lot of property in an earthquake,” she said.

Dennis Mileti, director of the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder is not surprised.

“The average citizen is consumed with dealing with life as it occurs on a daily basis, keeping food on the table and the toilets flushing,” he said. “There isn’t a whole lot of room for things that might not happen.”

For more information: Red Cross (213) 739-5200, Los Angeles County Fire Department (323) 881-2411

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QUAKE CHECKLIST

Earthquakes can strike at any time in Southern California. So, taking steps to put your house in earthquake safety order should be a priority. Properly securing objects, whether water heaters or fine china, will help limit damage to your home and possessions. Precautions outlined here also will help reduce chances that you or members of your family will be injured in an earthquake.

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Sources: Southern California Preparedness Project, Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Los Angeles and Orange County Fire Departments, Emergency Management Division; Federal Emergency Management Agency; Laffery & Associates INc.