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.
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