`This Son Is Dead, Ma'am'

THE NORTHRIDGE MEADOWS

At the place yesterday's temblor chose to take its greatest toll, the woman stood vigil by an oak tree, peering into the rubble of what had been her home.

For four hours, Hyun Sook Lee remained near the Northridge Meadows apartments, where as many as 40 first-floor units collapsed under the weight of the two floors above, killing at least 16 people.

Where there had been a courtyard with waterfalls and streams, there was now a subterranean void less than a foot high. Cars parked in an underground garage were flattened. Stairways and a catwalk collapsed.

Lee stood and looked for some sign that her husband and 14-year-old son would somehow emerge, that the searchers would find them under that mountain of debris.

Lee, a nurse, had managed to crawl out of her first-floor apartment. So had her other son, Jason, though his leg had been broken. But her husband, Phil Soom, 47, and her son, Howard - home on a visit from boarding school - had not made it out.

At 8:30 a.m., paramedic Dave Thompson approached Lee. "Ma'am, listen to me. Your son, how old is your son?" he asked. "This son is dead, ma'am. He is dead."

Lee dissolved into tears, her shoulders wracked by sobs. An hour later, Thompson again brought the worst of news. He told her that her husband was also dead, that there was no way he could have survived.

Seattle man gets bad news. All day yesterday, Julian Ellenberg of West Seattle watched television while television cameras watched him. His mother, Ruth Wilhelm, 77, lived in the Northridge Meadows apartments.

All day, he heard nothing from her and couldn't reach her. "I just want to know what's happened," he said. "Even if it's bad news, I want to know so I can start dealing with it."

This morning, he got the news, and it was bad. "I got a hold of my mom's in-laws," he said. "They were at the apartment yesterday, at the complex, checking out damage. The rescuers took them as close as possible . . . That was a part that did collapse, and the chances aren't very good. They spent the rest of the day talking to people to see if anyone saw her. They told me the chances aren't very good."

He said the Red Cross will give him a definite answer later today.

"I'm holding up. After hearing the news last night, I pretty much came to the conclusion that we're beyond miracles right now."

`I see blue sky, it's beautiful.' All of those who died in the 160-unit complex - located in Northridge, 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles - lived on the first floor.

The temblor had moved the apartment six feet to one side and then collapsed the first floor. "You make a house of cards, you push it, it tilts. That's what happened here," said Bob DeFeo, a battalion chief for the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

In all, firefighters made eight heavy rescues, using air bags that lifted the building so rescuers could crawl under. The air bags, purchased after the devastating 1971 Sylmar earthquake, can lift up to 72 tons.

"I see blue sky, it's beautiful," exclaimed one man, not immediately identified, after two hours of cutting and lifting brought him out.

DeFeo said the search would be carried on at least through today. "We're going to use every resource we have to make sure nobody is left in the building. That includes dogs, as well as listening devices that can hear people breathing."

`I lost one person.' Erik Pearson climbed to safety and then helped several Meadows neighbors escape. "People were screaming. They were crawling all over each other. People came down in front and between your legs."

Pearson said he and other rescuers went from floor to floor in the dark, flashing lights and hollering to alert anyone still conscious that they were there.

But for all of his save-and-survive success, the only thing he could talk about yesterday morning was his one failure.

"I lost one person," Pearson said, shaking his head ruefully. "There was a little old lady in the back. She was "still alive, lying face down on her king size bed. A beam had fallen across her," he said. Unable to move it, Pearson said he ran for help and a ladder, returning a few minutes later only to find her dead.

NINE HOURS, ONE SCARY RESCUE

After nine hours of tedious digging, rescuers freed Salvador Pena from the concrete remains of a collapsed parking garage, even as aftershocks rattled the rubble.

"It was scary," said L.A. firefighter John Musil, who crawled under chunks of concrete to reach Pena. "Every time it shook, I thought, `This is it.' "

Pena was driving a street sweeper on the first floor of the Northridge Fashion Center's three-story garage - in the heart of the worst destruction - when the quake hit.

"Everyone thought it was hopeless when we first got here," said Musil, first on the scene. "After we got started, we knew we were going to get him out, no matter what."

Pena, 44, was in critical condition at UCLA Medical Center last night with severely crushed legs, cuts and a dislocated spine.

The rescue was measured in minutes and millimeters. Firefighters used picks and sometimes jackhammers to break through panels of steel-reinforced concrete. With every aftershock - including a violent rumble at 12:45 p.m. - they turned to watch a concrete beam still towering over them.

Their goal was to make enough room for air bags that would then be inflated to lift the beam and the rubble from the truck.

"It was so tedious," Musil said. "Every time we raised it one-quarter of an inch we had to put in blocks so it wouldn't give away. Sometimes he'd scream and we had to stop."

Throughout the ordeal, paramedics remained at Pena's side. "He was in a lot of pain and he kept saying, `Come down and pray with me, come down and pray,' " said Rey Lavalle, a firefighter who comforted Pena in Spanish.

"He was absolutely scared stiff and so were we," said firefighter Kurt Fasmer.

DEATH, VALOR AND FEAR

Motorcycle patrolman's death. Clarence Dean, a 46-year-old Los Angeles Police Department patrolman, drove his motorcycle off the edge of the broken connector road at the intersection of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways, apparently unaware it had been severed just moments before. He hit his brakes too late.

Mitch Graff of Canyon Country was on his way home when the shaking started. After pulling over to assist other motorists, he saw the patrolman fly off the roadway overhead. The officer, still on the motorcycle, hurtled 50 feet to the ground. "We heard brakes, we looked up, and off he came," said Graff.

Northridge destruction. Reseda Blvd. runs north and south through the heart of Northridge and the earthquake zone. Along its more than seven-mile length, shop windows were shattered, bricks that had fallen from apartment houses littered the pavement and two automobile showrooms were completely smashed.

Along Balboa Boulevard, a water line broke and flooded the street three or four feet deep. Then, a 16-inch pressurized gas main ruptured. The explosion that followed sent flames 50 to 75 feet in the air.

Five homes burned, three on one side of the street, two on the other.

On Tampa Boulevard, the Northridge Fashion Center virtually collapsed.

At nearby California State University-Northridge, a parking structure looked as if it had been stomped in the middle by a giant foot, with huge chunks of concrete and twisted metal everywhere.

The 427-bed Northridge Hospital sat crippled with scraggly cracks fracturing its facades and light fixtures cluttering its floors. One floor was split open, leaving a four-inch gap. There was no water, only scattered power from generators and no X-ray capabilities.

Teams of emergency-room workers wheeled out of the hospital high-tech cocoons bearing premature babies, some of the more critical patients who were being evacuated to hospitals that still had power and space.

Late for work . . . and alive. Near Balboa Boulevard and Devonshire Street in Granada Hills, the side walls of a Kaiser Permanente medical building looked as if they had been peeled off. "It says something for showing up late for work," said a security guard, the first person to arrive there yesterday morning and who came in a little late - about 15 minutes after the earthquake.

Bellevue visitor. The quake struck with such sudden force that many people stumbled around dazed in the darkness, groping for shoes, eyeglasses, a flashlight. Six-and-a-half months pregnant, Emily Nathlich of Bellevue found herself barefoot and wrapped in white blankets as she and her mother hiked down 15 flights of stairs from their room at the Los Angeles Hilton Hotel.

Mother, infant fall through floor. In Canoga Park, a two-story apartment building collapsed and crushed a row of 20 cars parked underneath. Rita Cuezada, 20, and her 5-month-old daughter fell through their second-floor apartment to a vacant unit below. "My body weight fell on her three or four times," Cuezada said. "I thought she was going to die. I was just praying to God. I thought I was just going to be holding her dead body when it was over."

Santa Monica damage. Several buildings in Santa Monica collapsed outright, others suffered major damage and 12 fires and dozens of gas leaks were reported. In all, 75 buildings were deemed unsafe for habitation by mid-afternoon - including two large hotels.

Sylmar mobile-home fire. Fire engulfed at least 40 mobile homes at the Tahitian Mobile Home Park in Sylmar. Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Mark Jones said all but one of the estimated 230 homes in the park were either damaged or destroyed.

Although the cause of the fire was under investigation, Jones speculated that it started when a gas main was sheared by a mobile home that toppled from its foundation.

Resident Bernie Vazquez, 47, said the fire and pandemonium as people fled their homes made the scene look like "a war zone."

Vazquez grabbed a garden hose, but there was no water pressure. Firefighters, who finally quelled the blaze about 9 a.m., pumped water out of the park swimming pool before repairing hydrants.

`Why stand around.' Several unemployed medical workers, rolled out of bed by the temblor, rushed to Holy Cross Hospital to bandage what wounds they could as the hospital was evacuating its patients. "I'm certified (in emergency medicine). . . . Why stand around and pick my nose?" asked Charles Miseroy. He was born in the same hospital 22 years ago.

Store cuts prices. Some businesses didn't close. Despite no electricity to run the cash register and having half the products in the aisles instead of on the shelves, Save-on-Drugs in Panorama City stayed open - sort of.

Customers lined up outside, and clerks brought them their orders. Instead of gouging customers, Save-on did the opposite, selling most products at cost. A four-pack of batteries that usually sold for $5.69 was selling for $4.

Most people were buying chips, soft drinks and baby formula. When the store closed at 2 p.m to clean up the mess, it had sold all of its charcoal and batteries and most of its firewood.

Those who've had enough. Henry Turnispeed swore this was the last quake he would live through in the West. His brand new television set - price tag $800 - had flown off its stand and didn't work. For him, that was the last straw. "Soon as I money up, I'm gone," he said. "I think I'm going back to Chicago. It's much easier for me to deal with below-zero weather than looking up and seeing a television dancing on the ceiling."

Those who still call L.A. home. In Silver Lake, Patty Prickett is still paying off the federal loan she received to fix the damage to her home in the 1987 earthquake. And even though her house took a worse beating from yesterday's earthquake, she's not about to leave town. "You've got tornadoes if you go to Kansas, and you're bored," the psychotherapy intern said. "I love this city."

No way out? Lawyer Charles Diaz, 40, whose Sherman Oaks house suffered major damage, said he and his neighbors "are just waiting for the locusts and floods."

Still, he has no plans to leave, one reason being the drop in the value of his house. He wonders if he is doing the right thing. "Am I being unconscionable keeping my kids here?"

Burbank lawyer Scott Zonder joked: "This may be the final straw, after the riots and fires and the Dodgers and Rams. But people can't leave L.A. They have to wait for the freeways to get fixed."