Quake Cleanup Gets a Second Wind : Recovery: Officials shift funds from other programs and hire more contractors to cover free removal. More federal money is also expected.

More than three months after the Northridge earthquake, many streets in the San Fernando Valley still look like scenes from the town of Bedrock--with piles of concrete rubble heaped at curbs waiting for city crews to haul them away.

Cleaning up after January’s 6.8 temblor has proved far more difficult and vastly more expensive than anyone figured in the days immediately after the quake.

“The amount of debris created by this earthquake is phenomenal,” said Andres Santamaria, head of the city’s Earthquake Recovery Division.

As a result, Los Angeles residents can expect to wait as long as a month or more for quake debris to be hauled away. City officials estimate that cleanup costs in the city could balloon from $30 million to $60 million.

To help quicken the pace, the City Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a private company to haul debris by railroad car from Van Nuys to Utah, preserving space in local landfills.

Homeowners, mostly from the Valley, are flooding City Hall with telephone calls, as many as 600 a day, to get rid of the debris. Already, about 200,000 tons of junk has been scooped up and trucked off.

And city officials predict that they will haul away at least that much more before the end of the summer because many residents are only now beginning repairs as insurance checks begin to arrive.

The volume of debris caught the city off guard, Santamaria said. By the beginning of April, the city had spent most of its money allocated for debris removal.

But there is good news for neighbors who must maneuver their cars through streets made narrow by the piles of rubble: More money is on the way.

The budget shortfall caused a two-week slowdown in cleanup this month. The number of contractors hired to haul debris was slashed from 30 to three. But the city has hired 20 more contractors by shifting money from other programs and there are plans to hire another 20 firms as soon as more federal money arrives.

City cleanup efforts began within days of the Jan. 17 earthquake. Residents were promised free removal of quake-related debris such as wood, bricks or chunks of concrete. The free service saved residents as much as $500 per truckload, the cost of hauling the debris to a landfill.

With that kind of savings, many residents said they are willing to put up with the mess in front of their houses for a while.

Sherman Oaks resident Heather Bertini was told that it may be four weeks until the concrete pile that was once her pool deck is hauled away.

Until then, the four-foot high pile juts into narrow Greenleaf Street, causing bottlenecks when Sherman Oaks Elementary School lets out.

“I don’t mind waiting,” Bertini said. Shortly after the quake, Bertini hired a contractor to haul away about half as much debris for $250.

Immediately after the quake, most of the debris consisted of bricks from toppled chimneys and smaller household items broken during the temblor, Santamaria said. But as federal disaster agencies and private insurance companies begin issuing checks to begin rebuilding, the debris has grown to include large pieces of buildings undergoing repairs.

“Now the big bulky items are coming forth,” Santamaria said.

City officials originally estimated that cleanup efforts would cost $30 million, most of which would be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By comparison, cleaning up after the 1992 riots cost just under $15 million.

But over the course of three months, city officials realized that their estimates were too low, said Pat Bonino, who is overseeing the spending of disaster aid for the city.

By April, debris removal was estimated to cost almost as much as the total allocated for cleanup and the demolition of unsafe buildings. The demolition of about 350 buildings has yet to start.

So the city has asked, and is expected to get, more FEMA money to fund cleanup.

The checks are on the way, Bonino said.