EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Temblor Exposes Cracks in Cities’ Ability to Handle Disasters : Preparedness: West county areas that avoided major losses gleaned valuable lessons on how to respond to calamities.

Norm Wilkinson knows Santa Paula got off easy.

The worst result of Monday’s earthquake was the toppling of a dozen chimneys--and they fell during an aftershock, said Wilkinson, the city’s director of public works.

In his own hillside home, just one tiny vase broke.

But like officials in other Ventura County cities that escaped with only minor damage, Wilkinson said the temblor revealed cracks in the city’s ability to respond to a major disaster.

And it provided important lessons on how local government can better prepare for the next one, he said.

“We would like to think we had few problems because of good planning,” Wilkinson said. “But it was really just good luck.”

It was only by flukes of geography that cities in western Ventura County avoided the structural losses and injuries seen in the more easterly cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks and Fillmore.

Those cities, closer to the quake’s epicenter in the San Fernando Valley, have suffered an estimated $1 billion in damage to businesses, homes and government buildings, and injury totals have climbed to 800.

Oxnard, by contrast, suffered an estimated $100,000 in property damages, and Santa Paula counted about $50,000 in losses.

Officials in Port Hueneme, Ojai, Camarillo and Ventura, meanwhile, said damage to their cities is so slight that no monetary estimate is being made.

Despite the minor damage--and apparent lack of serious injury--in west county cities, leaders there know that things could be quite different next time.

Ventura County is riddled with more than 300 faults, and seismologists say it is ripe for an earthquake. A temblor of magnitude 6 or greater on the Richter scale could occur any time, scientists say.

So the Northridge quake has taught several valuable lessons, said Tom Frutchey, Oxnard’s city manager.

“We believe we were extremely lucky this time,” Frutchey said. “It was a wake-up call for us to improve our operations.”

The greatest damage to west county cities occurred in Oxnard, where minor cracks appeared on arches and exterior columns at the city’s newly built central library, Frutchey said. Access to Santa Clara Church is being restricted because its belfry tilted during the quake, posing a danger with its two-ton bell, he said.

And several city office buildings had to be cleaned up after filing cabinets and desks were strewn about, Frutchey said.

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Oxnard’s Fire Department responded to 137 calls on Monday, mostly for minor gas and water leaks, fallen chimneys and downed power lines, he said.

In Santa Paula, no significant damage was reported until Wednesday, when two strong aftershocks sent about a dozen brick chimneys toppling over, said public works Director Wilkinson.

Damage in Ventura, Camarillo, Ojai and Port Hueneme was so minor that in some cases, officials were not sure whether problems were quake-related.

“We found some minor cracks in a pumping station,” said Port Hueneme City Manager Dick Velthoen. “But it’s hard to say whether they were there before or not.”

Most city officials agreed that that quake showed them they lacked enough generators, cellular phones, two-way radios and water tankers--equipment that became essential in more seriously affected areas when utilities gave out.

The need for more reliable communications became especially clear in Oxnard following the quake, Frutchey said.

Dispatchers sending public works crews to check out areas for structural damage were using batteries after the power went out, he said. But the batteries soon went dead and the dispatch orders ceased.

Work crews also wasted time responding to calls about major damage that turned out to be false, said Robert Elliott, Oxnard’s director of emergency management.

Elliott said he will ask the City Council to purchase stocks of cellular phones and two-way radios to keep communications flowing during a crisis. He will also recommend that Neighborhood Watch patrols be trained to quickly and accurately report damage in their areas.

In Camarillo, City Manager Bill Little said that in the first hours after the quake, city employees had radio and telephone communication problems. He said the city is looking to purchase more walkie-talkies and cellular phones as a result.

Also, portable electrical generators to power the city’s water wells will also be bought to assure water delivery to residents in the event of quake-related power outages.

Cities also must push state transportation authorities for money to strengthen overpasses and bridges, many local government leaders said.

Oxnard officials temporarily closed down the Channel Islands Boulevard bridge that spans California 1 because structural engineers noticed new one-inch-wide cracks, Oxnard’s Elliott said. The California Department of Transportation reopened the bridge after inspecting it and determining that it is structurally sound but will need work in the near future, Elliott said.

In older cities, special attention also should be paid to structures made of unreinforced masonry, considered the most likely to collapse during an earthquake, city leaders said.

That point was demonstrated most dramatically in Ojai, where the historic downtown arcade rode out the temblor with no more damage than a few plaster chips flying off. The city had spent $1.7 million to reinforce the arcade, built in 1917, and the effort paid off, officials said.

“City staff said if we wouldn’t have made (the reinforcement), we might have lost it,” Ojai Mayor Steve Olsen said. “You’d think that other cities that have unreinforced masonry buildings would at least now become advocates for reinforcement.”

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Less costly disaster preparations that city officials plan to make include training Neighborhood Watch patrols to quickly assess and report property damage; bolting filing cabinets, bookshelves and other heavy furniture to walls, and updating telephone lists for people who must immediately respond after a crisis.

The point, city leaders agreed, is to be as prepared as possible.

“If it’s an 8.0 and we fall off into the ocean, how can you prepare for that?” said Port Hueneme’s Velthoen. “But we have learned some things.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson and correspondent J.E. Mitchell contributed to this story.