1994 Year

A federal appeals court on Monday asked the California Supreme Court to settle a legal question that has left many homeowners unable to obtain reimbursement for damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Attorneys for the homeowners say thousands of people discovered quake damage to their homes after the one-year deadline for filing claims with their insurers.

It was a signal event in the smoking wars. Five years ago, the chief executives of the seven top U.S. tobacco companies raised their hands, swore an oath and told Congress they didn't think nicotine was addictive. Within days, skepticism turned to outrage when secret documents leaked to members of Congress showed that high-ranking industry figures had privately acknowledged the addictiveness of nicotine three decades earlier.

While much of the devastation from the Northridge earthquake has been repaired, officials at the Van Nuys Superior Courthouse are complaining that they are forced to work in a building with cracked and buttressed walls and smelly corridors. "They did the Coliseum and every place else, and we're still here waiting," said Superior Court Judge Michael Farrell, who this year took over as supervising judge of the busiest San Fernando Valley courthouse. "Five years? Come on."

On Jan. 17, 1994, the San Fernando Valley's business community got the wake-up call of a lifetime. For some business owners, the terrifying temblor was a startling jolt that roused them from years of vocational slumber, and helped create invigorated enterprises that today enjoy revived revenues and increased profits.

The Northridge earthquake was portrayed by emergency preparedness officials as a great wake-up call for Southern Californians to shore up their homes in preparation for the Big One. But five years after the earthquake that caused at least 57 deaths, almost 12,000 injuries requiring hospital treatment and more than $40 billion in damage, a large percentage of Southern Californians have apparently put that wake-up call on hold.

Three years ago, he was a gleaming exemplar of the Republican Party's future. Freshly elected to Congress in 1994 as part of the conservative vanguard of self-styled revolutionaries, Rep. David M. McIntosh of Indiana was brimming with energy to upend the ways of Washington. An acolyte of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), he was rewarded with the kind of power and position rarely granted a greenhorn.

They became a most pleasant and unlikely diversion. A plucky team of precocious 12-year-old boys helped Northridge forget about a devastating earthquake and the Major Leagues baseball strike by winning the national championship at the 1994 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Although many of their families were still displaced from their homes by the Jan.

The Federal Reserve is about to decide whether to deploy a highly controversial weapon in its economic arsenal--a preemptive strike against an inflation enemy that has yet to appear. If Fed policymakers vote to raise interest rates at their meeting Tuesday--as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has hinted--they will be firing the first salvo in an effort to neutralize an inflation threat that they fear will show up later this year. Greenspan orchestrated a similar move in 1994 with spectacular success.

The financial health of pension plans improved in 1994 for the first time in six years, but the change resulted from a rise in interest rates rather than increased employer generosity toward workers, a study shows. The study released Wednesday by a prominent benefits consultant shows that the number of fully funded pension plans rose sharply last year, reversing a decline that began in 1988.

While it may come as no surprise to the people of Palmdale--who have watched as housing tracts, mini-malls, schools and roads multiplied--their desert town is the second-fastest growing large city in the country so far this decade, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Monday. Palmdale has already been recognized as the fastest-growing city in Los Angeles County and the state of California.