CSUN Is Too Vital to Delay Its Rebuilding : FEMA’s Past Treatment of Universities Causes Concern

Rebuilding the campus of Cal State Northridge in a timely and thorough fashion is a matter of vital importance to the San Fernando Valley and to Los Angeles as a whole. That’s why it is important to recall the history of some California colleges and universities that have sustained massive earthquake damage. The record, thus far, is a troubling one.

Even though more than four years have passed since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, for example, repairs have still not begun on wrecked and closed buildings on the campuses of Stanford and San Francisco State universities. Some Stanford classes are still being held in portable structures. Some dormitories at San Francisco State are still off limits. After the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, it took five years to finally complete the repair work on Cal State Los Angeles.

All three of those rebuilding efforts involved the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and, in some cases, disputes that are still ongoing over the costs and kind of repair work needed, and over the quality of some of the work that has been done.

“Our frustration came as we could never rely on any agreement with FEMA as things came together and fell apart,” said Valerie Veronin, Stanford’s acting director of facilities project management. And it is FEMA, by the strength of a Clinton Administration decree, that has promised to pay for 90% of the damage to public facilities like CSUN from the Northridge quake.

Sure, this is the “New and Improved” FEMA, according to the Clinton Administration, and CSUN officials have high praise for the agency’s efforts on its behalf so far. But ours is a cautionary concern. Simply put, CSUN has yet to broach “the nuts and bolts and dollars and cents of our claim,” to federal officials, according to President Blenda Wilson. This means that there is much to do.

First, Wilson and Cal State officials have to come up with the definitive assessment of the quake damage, and soon. So far, the low-ball estimate is comparable to that of other campuses after previous quakes. But the worst-case CSUN numbers (about $350 million) would amount to the costliest disaster ever for an American university.

Once those numbers are obtained, it is incumbent upon every local member of Congress, and on every state and local elected official from our region, to closely follow the efforts to rebuild the campus that instructs 26,000 students, employs 2,000 others and holds the San Fernando Valley’s largest library.

That kind of vigilance from our elected representatives will be important because no one knows how long the new and generous FEMA policy (and the Clinton Administration, for that matter) will last. And the nation’s interest and attention to the Northridge quake and its effects may wane considerably when the next hurricane devastates the East Coast, or when the next line of tornadoes rips through the Midwest, or when the Mississippi floods again and buries a few million more acres of farm land under mountains of silt.