Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401200158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
As the death toll from Monday's magnitude-6.6 quake rose to 46, relief efforts slowly gathered steam.
Throughout the city, residents rushed into and out of quake-damaged apartments and homes, tossing clothing and furniture into pickups and rental vans before building inspectors could condemn their homes.
Near the quake's epicenter in Northridge, work crews unrolled chain-link fence around a condemned apartment building as a procession of rental trucks pulled away.
"You could say it's a madhouse in here," said Norm Plotkin, a worker at a U-Haul rental center, as a crush of people lined up for trucks. He rented 25 trucks in a matter of hours.
President Clinton surveyed the damage Wednesday and ordered $45 million in initial quake relief. But Gov. Pete Wilson said total damage could reach $30 billion, making it as costly as Hurricane Andrew, the nation's most expensive natural disaster.
In a bitter taste of post-quake life in Los Angeles, thousands of commuters, robbed of their freeways, spent hours negotiating canyon roads and city streets to get to work.
To the north, cars jammed the Sierra Highway to bypass the damaged intersection of state Highway 14 and Interstate 5. A dawn aftershock caused a rockslide that narrowed the four-lane route through Newhall Pass to two lanes. Last week's 45-minute commute took as long as four hours.
Motorists ran into roadblocks and detours around street fissures in the San Fernando Valley, worst hit by the quake. Torrents of water from burst water mains, still unrepaired, flooded streets hubcap-deep and traffic lights remained lifeless.
A snapshot of the damage:
Some 15,000 people lost their homes, and 4,700 of them were staying at 24 city shelters. An estimated 4,000 dwellings were heavily damaged or destroyed, the American Red Cross said.
About 35,000 customers lacked natural gas; 40,000 households and businesses were without water; and 52,000 lacked electrical power.
Mudslides were feared in neighborhoods stripped of ground cover by firestorms; rain was predicted Saturday.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB