Foreign quakes boost L.A. disaster supply firms.

Sherry Heitz says she can't keep her earthquake disaster kits on the shelves these days.

"We never know when God is going to do our advertising for us," says Heitz, who owns Quake Kate in Thousand Oaks, a company that packages a variety of kits that include food bars, survival blankets, water, work gloves, lights, portable toilets, tents, AM/FM radios and first-aid supplies. "It's quite amazing. It's almost to the level it was after the Northridge quake."

In the cottage industry of earthquake preparedness, business tends to be an up-and-down affair. It goes up right after a big shaker and down again when people's memories of the event begin to fade. In recent weeks, though, there's another factor at play: Dramatic pictures of the devastation in Taiwan and Turkey.

"There's been a big uptick, especially in the past two weeks," said Ed Sylvis, who own Seismic Safety Construction in Pasadena, which does residential retrofitting. "The phones are going berserk," he says between back-to-back appointments.

"Business definitely has risen, beyond what we expected," said Rolando Geraldo, a worker at SOS Survival Products, a company in Van Nuys that assembles disaster preparedness kits. "Before September it was real slow. We practically had to come up with work to do. We even started sweeping."

Many earthquake-related businesses that sprang up after the 1994 quake eventually folded - victims of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality that's practiced by many Angelenos. Businesses that survived tend to provide basic disaster services or services mandated by a series of ordinances enacted in recent years.

"Only the companies that were already hooked up survived. It's been so bad," says Eric Davis, a sales manager at Calstraps Earthquake Safety Strapping in Woodland Hills.

But he agreed that media coverage of disasters in other nations has revived concerns about preparedness.

"People need to be reminded," he says. "If it's not easy for them, tomorrow they forget about it. They don't understand, it's not if it's going to happen, it's when it's going to happen."

Some local companies are finding their expertise and services in demand elsewhere in the world. At Quake Kare, for example, Heitz is busy sending disaster kits to Taiwan.

Last week, Itzhik Weinstein of Weinstein Earthquake Retrofitting in Sherman Oaks was the subject of a Korean TV report on retrofitting work.

Weinstein says his 25-person staff is doing about four to five retrofitting jobs a day - an increase of more than 60 percent since July.

More work is expected. New safety ordinances were passed in Los Angeles County that create specific earthquake-related opportunities. Calstraps, for instance, is among the firms profiting from a new requirement for heavy-duty strapping of home water heaters to prevent shifting during an earthquake.

Antiquake in North Hollywood installs valves th, at automatically shut off gas to homes during earthquakes of 5.2 or greater magnitude. Hrach Arjoyan, who was formerly in real estate and car sales, started the business in 1998 after the passage of ordinances that requires a gas shut-off. "Definitely business has picked up - it's been good," he says.

Still, the process of making a home earthquake-safe can be long and expensive. Major retrofitting can range from $2,000 for basic anchoring and bolting to $18,000 and upward for a more complex job, including construction of an entirely new foundation.

Sylvis, whose company focuses on older residences built long before retrofitting laws went on the books, started working with his father and grandfather in the construction business in the 1930s. He made the switch to full-time retrofitting in 1982, as calls for the work steadily increased.

"People became complacent within about two to three years of the Northridge earthquake," he says. "They think, 'My house has been through all the big earthquakes.' Of course, (Los Angeles) hasn't been through a big earthquake since 1857."