Quake victims pick up pieces

Quake victims pick up pieces

Months after temblor, displaced Valley residents continue with
adjustments

By Brett Pauly

Los Angeles Daily News

Isabelle Silverman has been missing work with a broken wrist
since tripping over the food bowl of her daughter’s pooch.

Julienne Hardy is readying her family for another year in a
cramped camper in their Granada Hills driveway.

And Stella and Nicholas Boyias’ baby boy is raring to crawl but
has no suitable floor space in the trailer parked outside their
Northridge house.

Home away from home has perhaps never been so distressing for
the San Fernando Valley residents and countless numbers of their
neighbors still displaced more than nine months after the
Northridge Earthquake.

The contradictory living situation has turned lives topsy-turvy
but, at the same time, lent a new closeness to some families who
have found a silver lining in the upheaval caused by the Jan. 17
temblor.

”It’s been stressful ­ five people living in a 29-foot
trailer,” said Stella Boyias, 31, mother of Coula, 5, Angela, 2,
and Vasilis, 8 months. ”We had no idea it would take this
long.”

”We’re basically camping out in the street, but you couldn’t
get any better bonding,” added her husband, Nicholas, 45, owner of
a video-distribution company.

”We’re stronger for toughing it out. It’s made our marriage
stronger, too. My wife and I have found we’re good partners. We can
handle danger. We can handle adversity.”

But relaxing "at home" isn’t what it used to be. There’s little
room, and less privacy. The kids’ clothes must be kept outside in a
dresser. Emotional fuses are short. Occasionally, shouting matches
erupt over stupid things.

Vasilis is busting to get out of his playpen and start crawling
but must wait another month until the family is back in their
rebuilt house. Angela must do with hard dirt and the blacktop of a
cul-de-sac for areas to play while big sis is off at school.

But Nicholas Boyias said he and his wife come from ”tough
stock” ­ they’re descendants of Greek immigrants who walked
to school barefoot in the old country ­ and that he believes
their children will prosper from the ordeal.

”They’re troupers,” said family friend Joyce Sapon of Reseda.
”I don’t know if I could do it.”

Retaining-wall rubble is piled along the curbs and fences of
empty homes, painting constant reminders of the quake’s dreadful
power, in a nearby Northridge neighborhood where Silverman also has
learned to take adversity in stride.

”It’s lonely at night,” she said. ”There are no neighbors
here.”

Her cast-clad wrist, broken last week, is keeping the weaver
from her loom but not from her lighthearted charm.

She recalls how she and her husband, Leonard, took in their
daughter, Laura, and two dogs ­ ”big ones, 80 pounds” ­
the day the temblor ravaged Laura’s Tarzana condo.

"We’ve been joking around, thinking that she’d never be living
with her mom again after 30,” the Philadelphia native said. ”And
her dogs, they’re so big they help themselves to food off the
table.”

The Silvermans have two pooches and a pair of cats of their own,
and are awaiting house repairs as well.

”It’s not good, but we’re getting along as best we can,”
Silverman said of the living arrangement. ”There are personality
clashes, but nothing that can’t be resolved.

”The worst part is that her dogs think they belong to me. She
works long hours and isn’t around that much. I’ve had a 79-pound
dog on my lap. He’s lonesome, wants somebody, and I’m it,” she
said.

The family menagerie isn’t expected to break up until the end of
March, when Laura Silverman’s home will be livable again.

The lengthy time frame for rebuilding isn’t uncommon, as
residents iron out insurance settlements, juggle incomes and
workdays, and wait for overburdened contractors.

”I’ve got 10 jobs I still haven’t started yet ­ people who
haven’t settled with their insurance companies,” said Lee
Hellinger, owner of a Granada Hills construction company. ”And I
have more people calling me from every part of the Valley.”

Hardy employs humor over hardship to deal with delays in her
rebuilding. She has lived for more than six months with her
husband, Tom Rumack, and 6-year-old daughter, Emily, in a
fifth-wheel trailer bought with insurance money ­ and expects
to be there until late next year.

”I don’t think I will ever take a vacation in this thing,
ever,” Hardy said. ”We don’t even own a truck to pull it. My
husband says we’ll put my mom in it when she comes to visit.”

Hardy, 38, said there are a lot of obstacles when it comes to
their reconstruction ­ overbooked contractors, dealing with
architects and financial worries stemming from limited
insurance.

”We’re not in a position to even think about seeking a bid,”
she said.

Meanwhile, her husband, a produce buyer, celebrated a quiet 40th
birthday Oct. 9.

”I wanted to surprise him with guests, but planning for a party
is like guessing how many people you can fit in a phone booth,”
Hardy said.

Even a normally simple task like washing clothes has become a
chore.

Hardy turns the water on at a main valve around the side of the
house, then twists another valve on a series of hoses that run
across the lawn and feed the washing machine.

”And I get cold only,” she said. ”The water heater isn’t
hooked up.”

At night, when the family cats jump up on the trailer’s
countertops, the rocking wakes Hardy. ”It moves like an
aftershock,” she said.

She has adopted a country song by Sammy Kershaw as her
creed.

”It goes, ‘You’re the queen of my double-wide trailer, with
polyester curtains and a redwood deck,”’ Hardy said. ”The
neighbors keep threatening to build us a deck. I already have the
polyester curtains.”

But residing in a 40-foot trailer while their house is rebuilt
is a heartache that affords little humor for Northridge resident
Marvin Zidel, 69, and his wife, Leona, 68.

”We don’t even joke about it,” Marvin Zidel said. ”All we
want to do is click our heels three times and go home.

”They say we’ll be in in another month. I’ll believe it when I
see it.”

The initial damage estimate was $65,000. Zidel expects repairs
to cost more than $250,000 by the time they’re complete.

The deductible on the retirees’ earthquake insurance was
$18,000. They’ll pay an additional $25,000 out of pocket, not to
mention the water and power bills that have increased by $550 a
month to cover construction needs.

”It hurts deeply,” Zidel said. ”It’s coming out of our
retirement. I worked 40 years to be able to retire and travel.
There isn’t that extra money to do these things. Best-laid plans of
mice and men, I suppose.”

Zidel has come to curse the slow-burning butane stove in the
rented trailer that his insurance covers.

”You can’t cook in there,” he said. They eat in restaurants
­ more dents in the retirement plan ­ and at a neighbor’s
home. The clothes are washed at a launderette. Their furniture is
in three large portable storage units and also in a neighbor’s
den.

Zidel was saddened two months ago when his wife came home from
cancer surgery only to recover in a camper.

”The stress makes it very tough,” he said.