Valley-based insurance firm brought to brink by temblor.

Richard Andre calls it the perfect storm. "We were headquartered in the epicenter. We wrote business in the epicenter and our employees lived in the epicenter," said the senior vice president for 21st Century Insurance Group, recollecting the days immediately following the Noahridge Earthquake.

Back then, the company, then called 20th Century Insurance, sold auto and homeowners insurance, and many of its homeowners policy holders, like its employees, were Valley residents.

Unsure of the safety of its own headquarters offices, the Woodland Hills-based company set up shop in the parking lot by the very next day following the quake, and conducted business in what employees came to call "tent city."

Upstairs in the offices, files had completely spilled out of their receptacles and lay scattered across the floor along with glass shards from the windows that had shattered.

Below, much of the staff, many Valley residents with their own problems at home, sat at makeshift desks with portable generators and toilets, answering questions and even handing out checks to those policyholders who came by.

"We certainly have emergency plans for fires, but it did not entail setting up temporary facilities in the parking lot," said Andre. "We did that because we couldn't get back into our own building immediately."

The company paid out $1.1 billion in claims as a result of the quake, nearly as much as 21st Century now has in assets, and enough to bring the insurer to the brink of insolvency. In 1994, 21 st Century lost nearly $500 million.

An agreement reached with American International Group Inc. by the end of 1994 kept 21st Century afloat (AIG has since acquired a controlling interest in the company) and, with the cash infusion--about $200 million--the insurer rebuilt its business, including an expansion into Arizona and later, Oregon, Nevada and Washington, and the construction of a state-of-the-art Interact site that now allows 21st Century to handle much of its direct underwriting business electronically. Still it wasn't easy.

A decision to discontinue offering homeowners insurance sent many of 21st Century's auto insurance clients elsewhere for those policies as well. And the insurer spent years settling claims originating from the Northridge Earthquake, in some cases only after protracted court battles.

Ten years later, those disputes are resurfacing. Legislation signed into law late in 2000 gave quake victims another year to file earthquake-related claims, and is expected to result in new lawsuits. New legislation has extended the deadline for claims originating from the earthquake and 21st Century has set aside $37 million to fight those cases.

But the company that will wage those battles is quite different, and far stronger, from the one that doled out temporary living expense checks to homeowner policyholders in the days and weeks following the Northridge Earthquake.

21 st Century Insurance, which now conducts business in five states including California, boasts revenues of $981.3 million and assets totaling $1.5 billion. In 2002, the company wrote $965.3 million in premiums and for the most recent quarter ending Sept. 30, 21st Century earned $12.7 million.

"Not only did we survive," said Andre, "but now we're thriving again in the business we do best."