Valley-area companies respond quickly to disaster.

Valley area companies were quick to respond with aid to Hurricane Katrina victims and aid was still pouring in late last week.

On Friday, Keyes Automotive Group, in partnership with 93.9 KZLA FM which encouraged its listeners to donate what they could, closed part of Van Nuys Boulevard and opened its lot for donations. With initial contributions of $100,000 from the company, Valley residents came to give whatever supplies they could, along with cash donations of over $15,000.

Keyes spokeswoman Stacey Seigel said the relief effort was the idea of Keyes' president Howard Keyes and vice president Howard Tenenbaum.

Seigel said the company arranged for two trucks to bring supplies to Adventist Community Services, one of the groups providing disaster relief to hurricane victims.

"I just got really choked up before I got off the phone with the Louisiana group," said Seigel. "She gave me a laundry list of things to buy: Sharpie pens, plastic bins for people's belongings, $10 phone cards so people can call their relatives."

Seigel said that neighboring businesses were more than willing to help--nearby car dealerships donated extra pallets to load supplies onto trucks, and when Mid Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Nancy Hoffman Vanyek went to purchase supplies at Staples with some of the donated cash, the manager gave her a 50 percent discount since she was purchasing items for hurricane victims.

Meanwhile, Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. kicked off a company-wide donation campaign by giving $100,000 to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and announcing that it would match donations that its employees made.

"You can't listen to the news or watch the dramatic images of the effects of Katrina and not want to lend a hand," said Jay Gellert, president and chief executive officer of Health Net Inc. in a statement. "We want to do all we can as quickly as possible to help the people affected rebuild their lives."

"In addition to our initial contribution, we will match each and every donation to hurricane relief efforts made by our nearly 9,000 associates," Gellert noted. "We did the same earlier this year to help with tsunami relief when, together, Health Net and its associates raised more than $112,000. We know that whatever resources we can give to the massive Katrina recovery efforts will be put to good use."

WellPoint Inc., the largest publicly traded health insurance company in the country based on membership and the parent corporation of Blue Cross of California in Thousand Oaks, pledged a $500,000 initial contribution to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and promised a 50 percent match of its employees' contributions.

"It is very important to organize support for relief efforts as soon as possible, to ensure that relief agencies will have the resources they need to carry out the massive task at hand," said Larry C. Glasscock, president and chief executive officer of WellPoint in a statement. "As Americans come together to help bring relief and rebuild lives devastated by Hurricane Katrina, we hope that these efforts will be a source of encouragement to the thousands of our fellow citizens who have suffered overwhelming losses."

Donations came from the Valley's other business giants, like Thousand Oaks-based Amgen, which announced a $2.5 million contribution to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and other groups. Amgen was also searching for ways to assist patients dependent on its drugs, like dialysis and cancer patients.

In the initial days of the storm's devastation Northrop Grumman Corp.'s employees found that the disaster was affecting them in personal ways, as 19,000 employees were working in facilities that were all offline during the devastation. The company pledged to raise $2 million to contribute to the Red Cross as well as its own 19,000 employees suffering the storm's damages.

It wasn't just the big Valley players that were finding ways to help Gulf Coast residents through what could end up as the costliest disaster in the country's history.

Encino-based NAI Capital made a $30,000 contribution to the American Red Cross, a sum that reflects $15,000 raised by the company's brokers and other staffers and matched by the company.

The Peter C. Foy Foundation, the charitable arm of Woodland Hills-based business brokerage firm Peter C. Foy and Associates announced that it would match every donation up to $5,000 going toward the hurricane's victims.

"In this time of distress, our fellow AmericanCamarillo-based Salem Communications used its Los Angeles radio stations--99.5 KKLA-FM, 95.9 KFSH-FM, NewsTalk 870 KRLA-AM and NewsTalk 590 KTIE-AM--over Labor Day weekend to encourage its listeners to donate to Feed the Children.