Earthquakes Los Angeles

In a decision that angered many Los Angeles-area veterans, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown announced Monday that the quake-damaged Sepulveda VA hospital will be demolished and replaced with a $65-million outpatient care center. The 431-bed federal hospital has been closed since the Jan. 17 temblor wrecked operating rooms, knocked out heat and water supplies and littered corridors with broken glass, forcing the evacuation of 331 patients.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 2.9 struck beneath Beverly Hills on Sunday and was felt from West Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its Web site. The "micro" earthquake struck at 5:28 p.m. about 2 1/2 miles below the surface. The sharp jolt lasted for a few seconds. No injuries or damage were reported, according to Los Angeles police and fire departments. It was centered a short distance from the epicenter of a 4.2 quake that struck 1.

Metrolink is preparing to open its fifth train station in two weeks on the Santa Clarita line, which has seen ridership swell dramatically since the Jan. 17 Northridge quake crippled many Southland freeways. The Santa Clarita/Princessa station, at 19201 Via Princessa, will open Monday. It is the latest emergency station to open since Metrolink extended service north to the Antelope Valley--opening stations in Lancaster and Palmdale on Jan. 24.

Homeowners with unresolved insurance claims stemming from the 1994 Northridge earthquake have a little more than two months to take advantage of a state law that allows them to file lawsuits against their insurance companies, state and county officials said Monday. Most insurance policies give the policyholder one year to file a lawsuit. This law extends that, allowing people to recover damages that weren't known about until a year or more after the disaster. The deadline to use the law is Dec.

Less than three months after the Northridge earthquake knocked down two sections of the world's busiest thoroughfare, Gov. Pete Wilson announced Tuesday that the Santa Monica Freeway will reopen next week, ending frustrating delays and bottlenecks for thousands of commuters. State officials hope the final cleanup of construction work can be completed early April 12 in time to let rush-hour traffic inaugurate the two new freeway bridges at La Cienega and Washington boulevards.

In a year marked by dramatic changes, these 10 events dominated the world of business and economics in 1994: 1. Interest Rates Take Off With the U.S. economy gathering steam, the Federal Reserve Board stepped on the brakes--six times, in fact. The central bank raised short-term interest rates to slow the economy and curb inflation. As usual, fallout from the Fed's actions was widespread.

A Claremont company was ordered to pay $6.4 million in damages to the owners of an 80-unit apartment complex here after a jury found substandard construction contributed to its destruction in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, lawyers said Wednesday. Reinforcing Post Tensioning Services Inc. of Claremont must also pay the owners, the Neil and Margo Shekhter Family Trust of Bel-Air, interest and court costs that could hit $2 million according to Steve Zelig, lawyer for the trust.

Developers and dignitaries officially marked the opening of a $10-million low-income apartment complex Thursday on the Reseda site of an apartment building destroyed by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Coral Wood Court Apartments are one of five projects in the San Fernando Valley undertaken by the public-private Los Angeles Redevelopment Corp. since the quake. Three are operational, including Coral Wood, which has rented 74 of its 106 units.

Calling him a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice in his effort to serve the public, officials Thursday honored the LAPD motorcycle officer who fell to his death from the collapsed Golden State-Antelope Valley freeway interchange during the Northridge earthquake by giving the rebuilt overpass his name.

The most comprehensive study yet to appear on casualties in the Northridge earthquake has concluded that both deaths and injuries were more numerous than the official tallies by the state Office of Emergency Services and coroners in Los Angeles and Ventura counties indicate. An article on the study, appearing in a lengthy publication on the quake released last week by the state Division of Mines and Geology, found that 72 deaths were attributable to the magnitude 6.

A minor earthquake rattled nerves in Los Angeles on Sunday morning, sparking fears of an explosion or terror attack in a public made jittery over the U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan. No damage was reported from the shallow temblor, which struck at 10:29 a.m. and was centered in Silver Lake, said Doug Given, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist at Cal Tech in Pasadena. "It was a sharp jolt, and it apparently caused some people some angst, thinking it was an explosion," Given said.

Sunday's 4.2 earthquake that shook large parts of Los Angeles appears to have involved the north end of the Newport-Inglewood fault, one of the most dangerous in Southern California, three leading quake scientists said Monday.

A 4.2 magnitude earthquake struck Los Angeles Sunday, breaking windows, tossing bottles from store shelves and rattling nerves, but causing little serious material damage. The tremor struck shortly after 4:59 p.m. and was centered a mile northwest of the La Brea tar pits in the La Cienega-Beverly area, said Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Southern California. Though weak in scale, the quake's shallow depth of 2.

So much water is pumped in and out of underground aquifers in the Los Angeles area that much of the landscape rises and falls more than 4 inches each year--a finding that is unsettling the calculations of the region's earthquake hazards. The surprising discovery is the product of a new $20-million seismic monitoring network of 250 satellite surveying stations and an orbiting imaging radar satellite.

Cal State Northridge has received a $3.9-million federal grant as reimbursement for costs related to the 1994 earthquake, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) announced Friday. The grant, one of the last from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to CSUN, will help reimburse the university for emergency protective measures it took after the earthquake, officials said. Earthquake recovery costs are expected to total $407.6 million, school officials said.

Culver City residents who were the first to take advantage of a new state law extending the period to file Northridge earthquake damage claims have been awarded nearly $7 million by a Los Angeles jury. For the 430 families who live in the three-story Tara Hills complex, it could be the end of an exhausting journey that began when they first filed claims after the magnitude 6.8 earthquake in 1994. "I just found out [we won] and am as pleased as could be," Bennie Dudley, 63, said Saturday.

The last of a series of building code revisions based on the 1994 Northridge earthquake is expected to pass this month, making Los Angeles, already considered among the world's most quake-ready cities, even more prepared. But is it enough? Among the small group of people still pondering the Northridge earthquake, there is fierce disagreement over how well its lessons have been taken to heart.

Sharon Cooper would give her eyeteeth just to hear the music again--those same loud rock 'n' roll songs that blared from the apartment complex next door, driving her and her tenants so crazy. But what years of arguing among apartment managers could not resolve, the Northridge quake took care of in a day when it wreaked havoc on the neighboring building, triggering its tenants to flee and take their tunes with them.

On the seventh anniversary of the devastating Northridge earthquake, a San Fernando Valley homeowners' group Wednesday encouraged property owners to settle unresolved claims and called for California earthquake insurance reform. The group, Community Assisting Recovery Inc. (CARe), gathered in front of a quake-damaged home on Balmoral Lane in West Hills to encourage property owners to take advantage of a new law allowing them to file revised claims with their insurance companies.

Two moderate earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 4.3 and 4.1, struck within 25 minutes of each other near the city of San Fernando before 7 p.m. Saturday, briefly clogging some phone lines, but causing no damage or injuries. The quakes came within four days of the seventh anniversary of the magnitude 6.7 Northridge quake of Jan. 17, 1994, which killed 57 and caused $40 billion in damage. Scientists said Saturday's temblors were not related to the 1994 quake.