Friends in Need : City Takes Pride in How Neighbors Joined, Persevered After Quake

SANTA CLARITA — It’s easy, here, to see who lives where.

The rows of neat tract houses, wide yards and basketball hoops in Valencia driveways bear witness to the good life in the middle-class suburbs. The new mall is on the main road. The first language is English and the people are mostly white.

East Newhall, in contrast, is dotted with rambling apartment buildings, pawnshops and vacant stores. The primary language is Spanish and most of the people are brown.

When the earthquake hit last Jan. 17, it shook both sides of town. It also shook up the way things have always been.

“There were white people and Latino people helping out,” said community activist Angie Jaramillo, president of United Mothers for Santa Clarita, recalling the days and weeks after the earthquake in east Newhall. A high school football team passing out water. The offer of diapers to a Spanish-speaking mother and infant camped under a tree. Here and there, a kind word, a helping hand.

“A disaster had just occurred and people were out there to help. The goodness came out,” Jaramillo said.

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As it marks the first anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, the new city of Santa Clarita is still marveling at the vibrant sense of community the quake engendered. A combination of can-do earnestness, neighborly togetherness and resilience gripped the town and bound it together--at least for a while.

“The resiliency here was remarkable,” said Carl Goldman, president and general manager of local radio station KBET. “I tease everyone that this valley has now close to 180,000 people and it still feels like it’s Mayberry R.F.D. But it’s that closeness here that has allowed everybody to get everything back together very quickly.”

Damage in and around town was fierce. It just didn’t get wide attention outside the Santa Clarita Valley, in large part because the city--about 150,000 people in the combined entities of Valencia, Newhall, Saugus and Canyon Country--is 35 miles north of Los Angeles.

It was impossible, of course, to miss the busted highways, including both of the 80-foot bridges that carried the Golden State Freeway over Gavin Canyon, just south of town.

But since it became so difficult to get into the valley from the south--the only way in was on the Old Road, a nondescript path through the canyon, two lanes in places--the rest was noticed primarily by the locals. The damage included 15,000 structures, 4,000 walls, 2,000 chimneys, 500 sidewalks, 350 road sites and 35 main gas lines.

About 1,700 of 2,300 mobile homes were knocked off their foundations, according to city officials.

Also hit hard were the California Institute of the Arts, the Valencia Library and the College of the Canyons football stadium. In all, the city estimates, the damage totaled $400 million. Half of that was to private property, City Manager George Caravalho said.

Making the initial steps of recovery more difficult, the quake severed numerous water lines. And the steel-framed City Hall was both a structural and cosmetic mess.

However, this was Santa Clarita--where, older residents recalled, those in the crowd at the City Council’s first session in 1987 clasped hands and swayed back and forth to an impromptu sing-along of “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand.”

City officials set up brightly colored tents in the City Hall parking lot and worked into the nights under powerful spotlights. Motorists, seeing the bureaucrats at work under the canopies, would honk as they drove by along Valencia Boulevard.

Immediate priority was given to water lines. It took until Feb. 6 to get them repaired. In the meantime, the city distributed 1.7 million bottles of water to residents--free.

The long lines for water, recalled Deanna Hixson, were remarkably civilized. No hostility. No cutting in line. Women and children first.

“People here have a different sense of community than, say, Los Angeles does,” Hixson said. “Can you imagine what a water line there would be like? Ha!”

After a few weeks, city officials asked United Mothers for a favor--to serve as translators for building inspectors on walk-throughs of east Newhall buildings occupied by Latinos who were wary of returning home. Of course, Jaramillo and others said.

Reassured, perhaps three dozen families moved back home from city parks. “It really helped that we reached out and that we spoke their language,” said Ruben Barrera, a city building official.

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The decision was made to get City Hall back in business as soon as possible, Caravalho said, as a symbol of recovery. It opened in April at a cost of $4.6 million.

In May, Caltrans reopened the Golden State Freeway at Gavin Canyon. In July, the Antelope Valley-Golden State freeway junction also reopened.

By then, the city was deep into an ambitious program to collect and recycle the massive quantity of debris generated by the earthquake. Asphalt, brick, block wall, wood, metal, drywall, plaster, stucco all were picked up, again for free by a contractor the city hired for the job.

“The front-end loaders would appear like every Friday and haul the stuff out of the street,” said Valencia resident Dick Norton, who contributed the remains of a swimming pool, gazebo, retaining wall, aluminum patio cover and 1,400 square feet of blacktop from a driveway. He was among dozens of residents sending notes or calling with thanks. “Great service,” Norton said.

Curbside pickup continued until Dec. 31. Of the 230,000 tons of material collected, 95% of it has been recycled, mostly into road base material, said Hazel Joanes, the city’s solid waste coordinator.

Funded by federal and state disaster relief money, the curbside pickup cost $4.3 million, she said.

At CalArts, damage was estimated at $34 million. It cost another $3 million to relocate classes and make seismic improvements, said Steven Lavine, the college’s president.

The irreverent school, which before the earthquake often seemed an enigma to the mainstream businesses in town, was deluged with 1,200 offers of help, Lavine said.

Lockheed donated its enormous research center in Valencia for classroom space. Similar low-cost or no-cost agreements led to classes at a theater at the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park, the Santa Clarita YMCA, a health club in the Vista Village shopping center and a dance studio in Pasadena.

“When you’re all disaster victims together, whether you’re avant-garde or conservative doesn’t matter anymore,” Lavine said. “I think we’ve made a human connection.”

It was much the same at the library, where 250 volunteers picked up soggy books. The library reopened last fall, with administrator Evelyn MacMorres proclaiming, “We’re back and we’re better.” About the same time, the football stadium reopened--just in time for high school playoff games.

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The work, however, is far from finished, and it is in east Newhall where signs of the quake remain most visible. Apartment buildings remain boarded up. About half a dozen businesses in the “downtown” commercial strip went under.

The federal government gave Santa Clarita $4.6 million to help fix it up. So far, it has not been spent. City officials are studying the issue; the patience of businessmen is wearing thin.

Revitalization “isn’t going to happen,” said Jim Davy, whose family-owned businesses have been fixtures in Newhall for 54 years. “You know it as well as I do.”

Meanwhile, there are other signs that the goodwill that so captivated the town is wearing thin. A couple of weeks ago, a group of parents from mostly white Stevenson Ranch beat back a plan to bus elementary students from east Newhall the five miles to their side of town.

“At quake time, yes, neighbor was helping neighbor. And for a few weeks after, maybe even a few months,” Davy said.

“I think you can certainly say that, for a period of time after the quake, that’s the way it was,” he added. “But everybody’s going back to the way it was.”

Times correspondent Douglas Alger contributed to this story.

Earthquake Memories

* The TimesLink on-line service provides a forum to share memories, thoughts and fears about last year’s magnitude 6.7 Northridge quake. Sign on and “jump” to keyword “TimesLink BB.” Select the topic “Quake Anniversary.”

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