EMOTIONAL AFTERSHOCKS STARK MEMORIES BRING TEARS, CHILLS.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

On Jan. 17, 1994, Guy Dean bade his dad farewell the last time he swung a leg over his Kawasaki Police 1000.

``Be careful, Dad,'' said the younger Dean, 25 at the time, who lived with his father and his father's girlfriend in Lancaster.

``Don't worry about it,'' the 26-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran said before speeding off into the High Desert darkness. ``I'll be fine.''

They were the last words spoken between father and son.

Dean, 46, was killed the morning of the Northridge Earthquake while racing to help residents in the San Fernando Valley. In the pre-dawn darkness, he plunged 40 feet off a collapsed section of the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Not all memories are as painful, or as tragic. But 10 years later, anyone who experienced the earthquake can relive it with slow-motion recall.

First came the jolt, tossing sleepers from their beds. Then the roar, like a locomotive through the living room. Then came the crash of breaking glass and tumbling furniture.

Followed by the wail of children from nearby rooms.

The magnitude-6.7 Northridge Earthquake struck at 4:31 a.m., rumbling from 11 miles beneath the San Fernando Valley to shake the Southland by its ears for 15 punishing seconds.

``What I remember most is the noise,'' said Deputy District Attorney Ken Barshop, who had been shaken from a dead sleep in his Sherman Oaks home. ``It was exactly like a train coming right through my house, and it didn't stop.''

Deborah Sable, 38, was also asleep when the quake rocked her Woodland Hills apartment.

``I was half groggy,'' said Sable, who had just moved to California. ``Then I felt something and thought, 'Oh, my God, someone hit the building with a car.' But it didn't stop. I saw the TV fly across the room.''

Thus began the avalanche of TV sets, dressers, file cabinets, bookshelves, glasses and bric-a-brac from Lancaster to Santa Monica. In garages, cars fell from jack stands. Water heaters sprung from their moorings.

Outside, swimming pools cracked. Chimneys toppled. Walls crumpled. Power, telephone and water service died.

The earthquake would damage an estimated 12,500 homes and businesses, rendering thousands of residents homeless. More than 20,000 homes were without gas; 48,500 without water.

When the dust settled, 57 people had died and 11,846 people were injured.

Linda Allison, a 20-year resident of Northridge, had lived through several earthquakes but knew this one was different. Her home lifted up and every window and door was thrown open. Water from her pool sloshed into the house. Gas lines broke with a hiss.

``I knew I was in major trouble,'' said the 54-year-old florist. ``I shut the gas off immediately. It was complete darkness.''

``I thought we were going to war,'' added Cira Zamora, 29, a schools data analyst who was a Mission College student in Pacoima when the earthquake slammed her town house. ``The first thing that went through my mind: Oh, my God, we're being attacked.''

Across the Valley, a Bullocks department store collapsed at the Northridge Fashion Mall. A 64-car Southern Pacific freight train derailed, releasing sulfuric acid into the air. The 164-unit Northridge Meadows apartment complex collapsed, killing 16 people.

For parents, the quake was especially traumatic.

Paula Rogers was frightened for her newborn twins, miles from her Canyon Country home at West Hills Regional Medical Center.

``I didn't know for 20 hours if they were OK,'' said Rogers, now 43. ``I race mountain bikes and I was going to ride my bike through the pass to find out what's going on.''

Moqui Lund of Glendale remembers her husband running downstairs to check on their two daughters. In the dark, he fell down the stairs and broke his foot.

``It's kind of comical,'' Lund, a 46-year-old jazz vocalist, said. ``I remember him jumping around kind of crazed.''

In Studio City, nine Los Angeles police officers saw someone screaming for help atop a collapsed hillside home south of Ventura Boulevard. People were buried in the rubble. Each of the officers would receive police medals for forming a human chain to rescue a woman and dog from the debris.

The woman's houseguest, however, was fatefully out of reach.

``The lady that we saved, we could hear her screaming, we could hear faint cries for help,'' said Lt. Andre Dawson, now vice coordinator for operations at West Bureau. ``We literally dug with our hands - we couldn't find any power tools in the neighborhood.

``The one ribbon I wear on my uniform - I wear that in honor of the lady we couldn't save.''

When Dr. Stephen Jones reported to the emergency room at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, he found a hospital muddling through mounds of debris.

Walls were cracked. Rubble filled hallways, swept in neat ridgelines against the wall. Power was out. Water was nonpotable. The hospital vacuum system, needed to suck away blood and tissue during medical procedures, was down. And 21 preemies at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit had required airlifting to other hospitals.

Yet all worked well.

``It was amazing we could make do with what we had,'' said Jones, now medical director of emergency services at the hospital's Roscoe Campus. ``I was amazed that, with everything down, we were still able to function.''

Backup generators roared to life. Bottled water was brought in. Gurneys shuttled patients between floors. Portable vacuum units were brought in. And makeshift triage areas were set up in the parking lot.

And doctors and nurses continued to care for patients without knowing whether their families and homes were safe.

Diane Vradenberg, a manager at Newhall Hardware, ducked broken bridges to get from her Saugus home to the store in Old Town Newhall.

``It was a total disaster,'' said Vradenberg, 49. ``Stuff that was in the front window ended up at the back door.''

So Vradenberg and her co-workers donned hard hats and set up shop at the back gate, selling flex lines, batteries, tarps and pipe fittings until 11 o'clock that night.

At the True Value Hardware in Simi Valley, manager Laura Elie recalls grabbing her kids to open an hour and a half after the quake. ``You had to find everything for your customers by flashlight. There were chemicals that spilled, there was paint all over.'' < Never were city workers so appreciated.

Mark Mackowski, an engineering geologist with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, worked 48 hours nonstop.

``I was in a clearly marked DWP vehicle and as we drove around doing inspections, people drove by and gave us the thumbs up.''

Martin Farrell, owner of the Fillmore Gazette, ran two blocks to check on the Masonic Lodge, the three-story unreinforced masonry building that housed his newspaper.

Once inside, he found more than 8,000 books ruined by water from broken pipes. Cameras and equipment were smashed. But Farrell published on schedule from the home of his photographer, using a bathroom for a darkroom.

``We suffered a huge amount of physical damage,'' he said. ``It changed the town forever.''

Rachel Lagerwey, whose home in Sherman Oaks was condemned, was affected for years by the disaster.

``It was horrible,'' the Sunland hairdresser said. ``I had nightmares forever.''

For Guy Dean, the loss of his father - a fun-loving cop affectionately known as ``Dizzy Dean'' - is even more painful.

Soon after he was killed, the restored interchange at Interstate 5 and Highway 14 was renamed in his honor.

``I feel the same today as I did then,'' said Dean, now a resident of Simi Valley. ``Every day I think about it - every time I see a police car, or a motorcycle, or I get on the freeway.

``He and I were close, best friends ... it's tough not having him around. My daughter asks me about his pictures on the wall. It drives me crazy.''

Staff Writers Naush Boghossian, Andrea Cavanaugh, Kerry Cavanaugh, Michael Gougis, Jason Kandel, Carol Rock, Lisa Sodders, Eugene Tong, Rachel Uranga and Angie Valencia contributed to this report.

Dana Bartholomew, [phone]

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) The interchange of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways was heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, left. Killed after riding his police motorcycle off the broken roadway was Clarence Wayne Dean, survived by son Guy Dean, holding his father's picture. Also pictured are Guy Dean's wife, Kimberly, and daughter Brittany, 3.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer

(3 -- color) Clarence Wayne Dean, who served the Los Angeles Police Department for 26 years, is memorialized at the interchange where he died the morning of the Northridge Earthquake.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer