Napa faces big challenges after quake (w/video)

Napa residents faced significant challenges Monday in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that cut off water to hundreds, closed schools and businesses and left scores with lingering injuries.

As aftershocks from Sunday’s magnitude-6.0 temblor rattled windows and while helicopters circled overhead, most of downtown remained closed to traffic, the streets filled instead with onlookers and a large number of media trucks.

The list of commercial buildings and homes deemed too unsafe to enter also grew, as inspectors from across the Bay Area continued assessing damage from the region’s most destructive earthquake in a quarter-century. Napa officials have yet to release a damage estimate, a figure they will need to secure federal aid. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that damage and economic losses from the quake could top $1 billion.

For many of those affected, just getting through the day was a struggle. At Napa Valley Mobile Home Park in north Napa, 67-year-old Patty Harras and her husband, Hermman Lehman, 75, filled buckets with swimming pool water so they could flush their toilets.

“We can get by,” Harras said. “We’d just like to use the facilities.”

As many as 400 people who live at the Orchard Avenue mobile home park were without water and gas, with no timeline for services to be restored. As volunteers from the Salvation Army provided meals to the residents, acrid smoke hung in the air a day after an earthquake-caused blaze destroyed four homes and damaged two others.

About 600 of the city’s 20,000 properties remained without water Monday as a result of about 90 water leaks, said Jack Larochelle, Napa’s public works director. He said he hoped to have water fully restored by Thursday, with priority given to the largest users, such as apartment dwellers.

“We’re doing our level best,” Larochelle said.

Doug Davis, who manages Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, said the complex of about 250 homes reserved for people over the age of 50 should be on that priority list.

“We’ve got elderly people out here. They need water to shower and use the toilets,” he said.

Water was being distributed at Pearl and Coombs streets and at the Los Flores Community Center on Linda Vista Avenue. At Las Flores, Scott Williams filled numerous plastic bottles for use by his family of five, including three teenagers.

Williams, who lived through the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994, said Sunday’s temblor - centered four miles northwest of American Canyon and about eight miles south of his home - felt every bit as powerful and caused just as much damage inside his home. He said his 19-year-old son narrowly missed being hit by five storage bins that fell onto his bed, prompting Williams to consider securing stuff better in the future.

Nearby, Carol Drive resident Mike Creason helped a neighbor unload chunks of a broken fence into a large trash receptacle, one of 18 installed at schools and parks around the city for people to get rid of debris and items damaged by the quake.

Creason described the panic of trying to get his two young children out of the house after the temblor struck. He said the kids refused to sleep in their own beds Sunday night and instead piled in with their parents.

Like many Napa parents, he was weighing how best to soothe his children’s fears.

“I’m not lying to them,” said Creason, a locksmith for the state Department of Corrections. “Earthquakes happen. Not always like this, but when they do, we need to be prepared.”

With all 31 schools in the Napa Valley Unified School District closed Monday, parents struggled to find child care. Some dropped them off at Las Flores Community Center, which is run by the city’s Parks and Recreation. Center officials said the facility also would be offering day care services Tuesday, when public schools were again set to be closed to allow inspectors to complete their damage assessments.

“We’re hearing nothing but a lot of gratitude for making these rooms available and getting the wiggles out, and for forgetting about Sunday,” said Wendy Stratton, who manages Las Flores.

Superintendent Patrick Sweeney said about two-thirds of the district’s 30-plus campuses in Napa, American Canyon and Yountville had been inspected and that none were found to have any structural damage posing threats to children. He said he hoped to have inspections completed by noon Tuesday, when officials will determine whether to close schools for a third day.

“It’s taking a little longer than we had hoped. But we want to be sure our classrooms are safe before kids go back in,” Sweeney said.

Schools normally receive state funding based on how many students show up each day, but state Superintendent Tom Torlakson said Monday that Napa schools will not lose out on any money because of the closures.

A Napa teen, 14-year-old Nicholas Dillon, who was injured when fireplace bricks fell on him during the quake, remained in serious condition Monday at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. Family members said he had been sleeping on the floor near the fireplace and suffered a fractured pelvis when the bricks fell.

Dillon was one of 208 people who went to Queen of the Valley Hospital for medical aid after the quake. The teen and an adult with a fractured hip were the most seriously injured. Throughout the day, 17 patients were admitted. There were no new patients linked to the quake since 11 p.m. Sunday.

Fifteen people spent Sunday night at a shelter set up at Crosswalk Community Church for quake victims, officials said.

The temblor - the strongest to hit the Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake - jolted the North Bay at 3:20 a.m. Sunday, damaging dozens of buildings, buckling sidewalks and streets and displacing, for at least a day, scores of local residents. The most damage occurred in the city of Napa, but buildings also were badly hit in Vallejo and Mare Island.

Inspections Monday brought the number of red-tagged structures - those deemed too dangerous for people to enter - to at least 70.

Many of the troubled buildings are deemed historic and have been retrofitted for seismic safety. Several more have been given yellow tags, allowing limited entry. Included in the list of closed buildings is the historic courthouse on Brown Street, where county jurors report. Courthouse proceedings have been moved to the Napa criminal courts building on Third Street.

The city’s senior center on Jefferson Street and the community services building downtown also were closed until they can be inspected.

Yusuf Topal, who owns two restaurants in downtown Napa - Napkin’s Bar and Grill and Tarla Mediterranean Grill - was grappling with the results of seismic inspections that deemed both structures unsafe. Topal said if he can’t get the restaurants reopened by Tuesday he won’t be able to pay his bills on time. The two restaurants employ about 80 people, including more than 10 who are salaried and get paid whether they are working or not.

“If we don’t have cash flow, that will hurt big time,” he said. “I can’t even express how much that will hurt.”

Topal said he contacted his insurance company, but without a policy covering earthquake damage he said his only hope is for government assistance.

About two blocks to the west, JoAnne Strickland was in an ebullient mood after her gift shop, Legends and Lore, came through the earthquake relatively unscathed. A broken fire sprinkler flooded the store, but most of the items survived, including a wall clock that Strickland inherited from her mother after she died of cancer in May.

Strickland turned the musical clock on Monday and appropriately enough it began playing “Memory,” a Barbra Streisand standard.

“Someone doesn’t give you more than you can handle, I guess,” Strickland said. She said she hoped to reopen her store within the coming days.

There was more good news in Napa on Monday after PG&E restored power to the remaining customers in Napa and Sonoma counties whose electricity was cut off by the earthquake. More than 70,000 customers were initially affected.

All of the city’s gas leaks and breaks also have been resolved, City Manager Mike Parness announced Monday at a packed news conference inside City Hall.

Due to the continued risk of falling building debris, city officials pushed back a deadline to ease traffic restrictions downtown. They had hoped to have two-way traffic restored by Wednesday but said Monday that was unlikely.

South of town, the quake shattered most of the windows in the air traffic control tower at the Napa County Airport, making the tower unusable, according to federal aviation officials. Each window in the 75-foot-tall tower is 9 feet tall and 5 feet wide.

“It could take several weeks to get new windows manufactured and installed,” said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The airport is used mostly by private air traffic. Officials were working to secure equipment inside the control tower to shield it from weather damage and to set up a temporary tower. In the interim, pilots will receive takeoff and landing clearance from Oakland’s traffic control center, Gregor said.

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, announced Monday that $2 million in federal transportation funds will be directed to Caltrans and local agencies to use in rebuilding quake-damaged roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure in the Napa Valley.

Thompson said the money would help offset repair costs, now estimated by Caltrans to top $10 million. The agency has identified bridges and roadways that were damaged, including surface cracking on Highway 121 north of the Sonoma-Napa County line at Cuttings Wharf as well as “significant stress to joints on bridges including the Napa River Bridge,” Thompson said in a statement. His district includes Napa County as well as portions of Sonoma County and other North Bay counties.

Dozens of aftershocks have occurred since Sunday morning but no further damage has been reported.

In Vallejo, city officials estimated damage at $5.2 million. As of Monday afternoon, 45 buildings were significantly damaged by the quake, including 11 that were red-tagged for non-use. Most of the affected buildings are commercial, according to city officials. A building on the 400 block of Georgia Street containing eight residential units was evacuated because of structural concerns.

Vallejo officials reported at total of 21 water breaks since Sunday, but water service has been restored to all city residents. Some businesses on Mare Island were still without water Monday afternoon because of pipe breaks.

Barry Martin, spokesman for the city of Napa, said Monday morning said there were no reports of problems overnight involving looting or other crimes with damaged property.

“We had zero calls for any problems last night even though there are businesses with windows broken out,” Martin said. “We’ve very proud of that.”

Staff Writer Angela Hart contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com.