100 BRIDGES UNFIXED FUNDS RUN OUT FOR SEISMIC RETROFITTING.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

Ten years after Southern California's freeways collapsed during the Northridge Earthquake, crippling commutes and fraying nerves, nearly 100 smaller bridges remain in need of seismic retrofitting - a program stalled by state and local government financial problems.

Caltrans strengthened virtually every Los Angeles-area freeway under a $1 billion program finished in 2000, but the state eliminated further funds for city and county bridges last year as the budget crisis worsened.

Now - with Saturday's 10th anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake fast approaching - local officials are struggling to find money to continue a program intended to prevent a recurrence of the kind of devastation that came the morning of Jan. 17, 1994, when the 6.7-magnitude temblor sent 10 bridges crashing to the ground.

``That's where the big question is: What's going to happen? Without the state funding, it's up to the cities and the county,'' said Ken Pellman, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, which oversees the local retrofitting program.

``This has been going on for years: Here's the mandate to retrofit these bridges, here's the money to do it. It's uncertain where the funding is going to come from.''

Countywide, 59 bridges from Santa Clarita to Long Beach are ready to be upgraded, if funding becomes available.

The city of Los Angeles, which has 27 bridges on its retrofitting list, shifted money last summer from a 1990 voter-approved bond measure for repairing bridges to backfill a shortage of state money for seismic improvements.

The city is scheduled to begin work this year on half of the 10 bridges in the San Fernando Valley, many needing the steel jackets that have become a mainstay of post-Northridge retrofitting.

``A few of them are more vulnerable than others,'' said John Koo, manager of the city's bridge program.

``They should all stand in a moderate earthquake, but in a major one some are more vulnerable than others,'' he said. ``These 27 have collapse potential in a major earthquake event.''

The pre-dawn Northridge Earthquake barreled through Southern California like no other disaster in a generation, killing 57 people and causing more than $40 billion in damage, making it the costliest earthquake disaster in U.S. history.

The Golden State Freeway/Antelope Valley Freeway connector, the Santa Monica Freeway and the Ronald Reagan Freeway between the San Fernando and Simi valleys were taken out of commission when 10 bridges collapsed.

Los Angeles Police Department Officer Clarence Wayne Dean died when his motorcycle plunged 40 feet off a collapsed freeway as he rode in the pre-dawn darkness to help victims.

Hundreds of thousands of motorists spent months funneling onto streets for detours. Commutes dragged out for hours in miles-long backups that cost the area an estimated $1.6 billion in fuel and lost time. Communities became isolated islands.

Caltrans embarked on a massive $250 million rebuilding effort that reopened crucial routes in record time, thanks to streamlined procedures and generous bonuses to contractors who finished ahead of schedule.

``When the entire region believes in something, we can move forward quickly. That's an important lesson with transportation,'' said Caltrans' Los Angeles-area director Doug Failing, who had been a design chief overseeing round-the-clock efforts to get the freeways fixed.

``There was no second-guessing - Do you want to build a bridge or not? Everyone agreed. Build it. Build it quickly.''

But still, the months after the quake proved horrendous for a region dependent on the automobile.

Antelope Valley residents had to arise in the middle of the night to start their southbound commutes. Sy Merrill of Quartz Hill said that at the time he even thought about renting a room near the Simi Valley high school where he taught after spending five hours in traffic.

Caltrans also made improvements during the rebuilding projects.

Car-pool lanes were added, traffic signals synchronized and Metrolink, the then-new suburban commuter rail service, launched seven new stops on its lines through the Valley - increasing ridership from 1,000 to 8,000 passengers daily on one route.

Northridge resident Karl Berger became an instant convert, leaving his car in the garage and boarding Metrolink at the new Northridge station in March 1994.

``I said, This is the way to go,'' said Berger, who moved into his Northridge neighborhood in 1986 in part because plans had been under way for public transit.

``There are so many people on with the same similar story. At the 5 (Freeway), everybody watches out the window, you see the traffic all jammed up, we're going by at 65 miles per hour,'' said Berger, who stayed with the train until he retired last month from his job downtown - as a Caltrans traffic engineer.

But most train riders and car-pool participants went back to their solo- driving ways once the freeways reopened, according to a Caltrans report on the quake.

Since the quake, the state ramped up its retrofitting efforts, which had been under way since the even deadlier Sylmar Earthquake in 1971 and got more attention following the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, with the tragic double-deck freeway collapse in Northern California.

By 2000, Caltrans had retrofitted its 670 bridges in Los Angeles and Ventura counties at a cost of $1 billion, a project funded by gas taxes and bonds approved by voters in 1996. One bridge near Wilmington remains to be rebuilt.

``Since we've had these earthquakes and disasters, they've taken this pretty seriously,'' said John Hall, a professor of civil engineering at Caltech in Pasadena. ``They decided they didn't want that to happen again, and accelerated it even more.''

Caltrans was criticized after the Northridge Earthquake because the 5/14 interchange had also collapsed during the 1971 Sylmar Quake. But it later was determined that the interchange had not been built to new codes developed after Sylmar, and that the other bridges that collapsed in 1994 had not yet been seismically upgraded.

``The most important thing we learned in Northridge was the retrofit strategies were the correct strategies. We pretty much had them down. We just needed to have the consensus,'' said Failing, the Caltrans chief.

While the federal government continues paying its 80 percent portion toward the repairs, the 20 percent that was coming from the state now needs to be generated locally because of the budget crisis, officials said. The state cut $10.5 million statewide from the program last January and an additional $13 million this 2003-04 fiscal year.

The retrofit program also went from mandated to discretionary status.

Experts say improving the small bridges is probably not as critical as the massive freeway structures that carry thousands of motorists daily.

Still, experts say, the more widely used bridges should get attention.

``There are important local bridges,'' said Hall, the Caltech professor.

``If there's a long bridge and traffic gets backed up that's probably something you don't want to put off,'' Hall said. ``You kind of have to deal with it on a case-by-case basis.''

The county, which had already overseen retrofitting 150 bridges in cities and unincorporated areas, is working on how it will handle the remaining 59 at a cost of about $1 million each.

County officials said they'll likely dip into their highway funds to repair the handful of bridges in unincorporated areas and that they're working with the smaller cities to determine whether they have funds available to proceed.

``It's one of those things where there's cooperation needed on so many different levels,'' Pellman said.

``Now, they're left with a situation where they have to figure out what to do if they want to carry through with some of these projects.''

Lisa Mascaro, [phone]

lisa.mascaro(at)dailynews.com

VALLEY SPANS STILL WAITING

The following bridges in the San Fernando Valley still need to be retrofitted with seismic improvements:

--Foothill Boulevard over the north branch of the Tujunga Wash.

--Riverside Drive over the Tujunga Wash.

--Devonshire Street over the Pacoima Diversion Canal.

--Canoga, Corbin, Mason, Tampa and Winnetka avenues, Vanowen Street and Victory Boulevard over the Los Angeles River.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Truck driver Ervin Nicols waits as his truck is lowered from a shattered freeway in the Newhall Pass two days after the Jan. 17, 1994, Northridge Earthquake. Many overpasses still need seismic retrofitting.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer

(2 -- color) The damage done by the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 to the Golden State/Antelope Valley freeway interchange was quickly repaired, although other bridges still await retrofitting.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

Box:

VALLEY SPANS STILL WAITING (see text)