Quake Jolts Vast Area of Southland : Seismic shocks: Temblor measures 5.5 and is centered near Upland. Foothill cities suffer the most damage but only a handful of injuries are reported.

By KEVIN RODERICK and LOUIS SAHAGUN

March 1, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

A strong earthquake rumbled beneath Southern California on Wednesday, rattling residents throughout the region but inflicting most of its damage in foothill cities on the Los Angeles and San Bernardino county line. Only a handful of injuries were reported.

The 5.5-magnitude quake began shaking at 3:43 p.m. and lasted for 30 seconds. It was centered where two major faults meet in the San Gabriel Mountains about three miles northwest of Upland--about 40 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

The quake was the strongest in Southern California since the October, 1987, Whittier quake. Its rolling motion was felt from Tijuana, Mexico, to Bakersfield and Santa Barbara.

By mid-evening, 19 aftershocks had also been recorded--the stiffest a 4.8-magnitude shake at 7:24 p.m. that sent a boulder crashing down on a vacant house in Mt. Baldy Village.

Seismologists watching the activity announced there was a small chance of an even larger quake striking the region in the next three days.

Officials in four cities--Upland, Pomona, Claremont and La Verne--declared local emergencies, citing damage to homes and businesses. The declarations are the first step toward receiving government disaster aid.

While the quake produced a large quantity of broken glass and toppled shelves, the region’s major buildings and infrastructure fared well. Freeway damage was considered minimal, airports continued operating and there were only isolated outages of power and telephones.

As with most quakes, the temblor produced an almost capricious pattern of damage--and plenty of harrowing tales.

In the San Gabriel Mountains above Azusa, a father and son out for a day of mountain biking were buried by rock slides, their helmets smashed. Alonzo Jimenez II, 57, of Pico Rivera and his son, Alonzo III, 31, of Hacienda Heights, freed themselves and walked to a ranger station--to the marvel of rescuers.

“If you had seen those two helmets you couldn’t believe that anyone had survived,” paramedic Marco Gonzales said. “Apparently when the landslide hit they were absolutely covered by heavy rocks. They had bruises and abrasions all over their bodies in addition to the son’s broken right forearm.”

They were airlifted to Foothill Presbyterian Hospital in Glendora for treatment.

In La Verne, the roof caved in and a wall collapsed at a brick auto parts warehouse with 60 people inside. No one was injured inside the 70-year-old structure at D Avenue and Arrow Highway, but employees of the Farwest Distribution Center won’t soon forget the quake.

At first they thought the rumbling was an Amtrak train--a very fast train. Then the east wall began to break apart, and the roof swayed and sagged.

“It scared me to death,” said supervisor Stan Sokolowski, who saw daylight where the roof usually was. “I said, ‘This is bad. Get out!’ I went screaming through the warehouse. ‘Get out. Get out.’ ”

People dived onto the loading dock in a mad scramble to escape, and several crawled out through open windows. There was one injury when a woman bruised her knee while jumping from the loading dock.

Chris Mau, a landscaper from Ontario, was hiking on Mt. Baldy with a friend when he heard a “rustling in the bushes, like a big gust of wind had come up.”

“The next thing I know these rocks are coming down the mountain, straight for us,” Mau said. “I panicked and grabbed my friend and we dove behind this little retaining wall.”

As the pair watched, a rock slide that appeared to come from the top of the mountain jumped the highway and began rolling down the slope into a ravine, Mau said.

“It was really hairy,” he said. “The rocks were like flying over our heads. If it had been 15 minutes later, we’d have been in that ravine and dead for sure.”

In Claremont, the Griswold Hotel suffered minor damage to a wall in its dinner theater building and lost some liquor bottles. Guests who had been in their cars and didn’t feel the quake returned to find TVs knocked over and drawers askew.

“Some people thought their rooms had been broken into,” desk clerk Robert Hartman said.

Slides and fallen boulders blocked two major routes into the mountains. California 39 was closed north of the Canyon Inn intersection, and a 12-mile stretch of Mt. Baldy Road was closed by boulders. The Mt. Baldy road reopened for a time, but was closed again when an aftershock tossed new boulders down on the pavement.

While the quake left its mark in an unpredictable pattern, the small city of Upland at the foot of the mountains felt a major share of its force. Twenty-eight people, tenants in a single apartment building, were evacuated for the night because of damage to their dwellings.

A four-bedroom home on Kelly Avenue caught fire and burned to the ground. Jack Wenger, a physical education teacher at Chaffey High School, had left the house 15 minutes before with his two sons and several neighborhood boys for Little League practice.

Wenger and his wife Jeri had stored away quake survival provisions after the Whittier earthquake, but the kit was of no help.

“We were prepared. But it doesn’t matter how prepared you are. If we had been inside the house, we would not have come out of this,” said Jeri Wenger, who was at work when the fire began.

Upland City Manager Ray Silver said other damage in the city included toppled chimneys, fallen power lines, ruptured gas and water mains and broken windows.

Gertrude Gross, who is 90, was in her first-floor Upland apartment writing a letter to her sister. “The biggest thing I’ve ever felt,” she said. An hour after the quake she hadn’t finished the letter. “I’m still too shaky,” Gross said.

Lucrecea Delgadillo was in her boutique on North 2nd Avenue when the quake rolled by, freezing her with fear. She suffered a broken arm in a 1966 Venezuela quake.

“I couldn’t move. I had three customers in the store and they all looked at me, waiting for me to do something, and I could do nothing,” Delgadillo said.

In nearby Claremont, incidental damage was visible everywhere, but nothing serious was reported. “We’ve got loose bricks and stuff scattered all over town,” said county Fire Capt. Roland Krumm.

Pomona City Hall was closed at least until Friday after losing four large panes of glass and suffering damage to fire escapes. In Ontario, there was minor damage to stores and offices.

“We had three or four plate glass windows break in our business area, and part of the facade fell off one of our buildings,” said Ontario police spokesman Jim Vandever.

The Montclair Plaza, a large shopping center, was closed as a precaution but the 190 stores expect to reopen this morning. The Mansion restaurant in San Dimas lost a chimney, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Philip Hatch said.

There was also damage to a Stater Bros. market in La Verne, and to the Blue Moon Cafe in the older section of Claremont. The restaurant lost about 30 bottles of wine, and bricks fell from its facade. “We’re closed now and I don’t know when we’ll be able to reopen,” owner Erik Gosswiller said.

The 219-year-old San Gabriel Mission, closed since the Whittier quake, suffered new indignities in the form of more cracks and chipped plaster, Father Gary Smith said.

A plate glass window shattered in an unused control tower at Ontario International Airport and ceiling tiles broke loose in the main terminal, said Don Miller, deputy executive director of the Los Angeles Airport Department.

The quake was foreshadowed by a smaller temblor shortly after noon in the same spot. Scientists said this is a fairly rare phenomenon.

Phyllis Winter, who rode the big quake out at her home in Juniper Hills, high above the Antelope Valley on the northern flank of the San Gabriel Mountains, had a forewarning of a different sort. At at about 2 p.m., in broad daylight, “the coyotes all over the hills, up above us, below us, all around us, were howling.”

They kept it up for “a good hour or so,” Winter said.

When the quake hit, it enlivened the afternoon across the Los Angeles Basin.

Allan Turner, 43, a resident in a Lawndale AIDS hospice, roared with delighted laughter.

“Whoa! Where’s my Valium? Somebody sedate me!” he joked as the rumbling continued.

In Tustin, about 45 Pacific Bell Telephone employees were completing a day-long earthquake drill in the company’s emergency operations center when the quake struck.

“It was eerie, very eerie,” said Linda Bonnekson, a company spokeswoman who participated in the drill. “The room got very quiet. Everybody just looked at each other.”

When the rocking ended, Bonnekson said several people quipped that the drill was “the most realistic yet--a great touch.”

In downtown Los Angeles, stock broker Barry Thomas was talking to a customer. “I put him on hold. I didn’t tell him anything--I just put him on hold,” Thomas said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay was just starting to address the jury at the county courthouse when the ceiling tiles began to squeak and the courtroom began to roll.

Stunned, the judge, jurors and the defendant stared in fascination at the ceiling, and a few jurors yelled to the Judge Maurice Hogan, “Where shall we go, where shall we go?”

Before anyone could move, it was over.

At a Los Angeles County Transportation Commission hearing downtown, county Supervisor Ed Edelman shouted to “get down!” and dove under his desk. Spectators began to flee from the room, but came back grinning when the shaking got no worse.

But farther west of downtown Los Angeles, the quake was felt more gently.

Shoppers at Tiffany and Co. Jewelers in Beverly Hills were unfazed. “We felt it, but we weren’t really affected,” said operations manager Yves-Robert Manual. “The clients just continued shopping, and I don’t think anyone reacted.”

QUAKE KITS FOR CAR, HOME

Opinions vary as to what should be included in earthquake preparation kits, but here are the basics for two different kits: FOR THE HOME:

Flashlight (with extra batteries and bulbs)

Portable radio (with extra batteries)

First-aid kit and handbook

Water (two quarts per person in each household)

Purification tablets or liquid chlorine bleach to disinfect water

Foods: Store only canned, powdered, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods--enough to last one week

Personal items: toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, soap, towel, razor, any needed prescriptions, extra pair of eyeglasses, antiseptic cream, adhesive tape, alcohol, aspirin, bandages, gauze

Gloves

Plastic trash bags

Aluminum foil

Tissues

Pocketknife

Manually operated can opener

Mini-barbecue grill or hibachi

Matches, candle and Sterno

Fire extinguishers

Screwdriver, crowbar

Pipe wrench and crescent wrench for turning off gas and water mains

Sleeping bags or blankets