Shaping Up for the Big One

The San Francisco Bay Area earthquake--now being referred to as the Pretty Big One up there--has caused many Angelenos to ask a pretty big question: How safe are their homes?

“Generally, homes in the San Fernando Valley are in pretty good shape for earthquakes,” says David Grover, of Grover-Hollingsworth & Associates in Westlake Village, a firm of geotechnic consultants. “Most have wood frames, which do well in earthquake shaking. And because most Valley homes are relatively new, there aren’t large amounts of unreinforced brick or block that are subject to collapse.

“With respect to life and limb, you have a much higher risk of having things in your house fall on you than of having the house fall on you,” Grover says.

Building inspector Scott Fisher, a partner at Certified Construction Services in Van Nuys, says, “I’ve seen some houses in the Sun Valley area that are sitting on rock footings with just a little cement mixed in, which is very unsafe.” These houses are much more susceptible to sliding off their foundations.

Many Valley home inspectors, usually hired by home buyers during the escrow process, agree with Bill Ryan of W.H. House Inspection in Sherman Oaks. “Probably 90% or more of serious home damage is not caused by earthquakes but by improper drainage and overwatering around a home’s perimeter,” Ryan says. Excessive water can contribute to a foundation’s settling and to dry-rotting of the base of the home’s wood frame.

Mother-Daughter Book Wars

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan and her daughter Patti Davis haven’t exactly been mum about their lack of closeness. When it comes to book sales, they’re even farther apart. Valley booksellers report that mother has outdistanced her daughter by a wide margin in the publishing game.

“The recent Patti Davis book was a real bomb,” says Earl Spare, owner of The Paperback Shack in North Hollywood. “It doesn’t matter who your father is. If it’s a good book, it will sell; if it’s a lousy book, it won’t.”

The smaller independent bookstores and chain stores in the Valley report that daughter Patti’s book, “Deadfall,” sold poorly. Yet the chains had higher sales than the independents did of Nancy’s “My Turn.” Salespeople at Crown Books and B. Dalton Bookseller outlets note that Mrs. Reagan’s book is doing well.

Dave Dutton, of Dutton’s Books in North Hollywood, thinks his customers might have been saturated by the publicity. “People say to themselves, ‘Well, I saw Mrs. Reagan’s Mike Wallace interview, I read the piece in the Times, I saw her on the morning show. What’s left to know’ ” he says.

The Doctor Is Expecting

Dr. Babs Levenstein, who finished her residency seven weeks ago and is now an obstetrician/gynecologist at Humana Hospital in West Hills, is pregnant with her first child, due Jan. 6.

“I definitely have more of an understanding of what my patients are going through now,” she says enthusiastically. “There are certain aches and pains that you just don’t know what they are. I know they’re nothing serious, but I can see how you could be very scared.”

Sometimes Levenstein feels hampered by her knowledge. “I know all the disasters that can happen at different stages of a pregnancy and I always wonder if they’re going to happen to me,” she says. “You’re better off if you don’t know all that.”

Dr. Bruce Schiffman, a Tarzana ob/gyn and father of three who has been practicing for 10 years, says, “When you’re in the role of the expectant father instead of the doctor, it gets very hard not to second-guess the other doctor.”

Schiffman’s wife, Mary, was also ambivalent about his dual identity during her pregnancy. “She’d ask me a medical question and after I answered her, she’d say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Basically, she had trouble believing me because she met me in a discotheque when I was 20.”

His response was to suggest she call her own doctor.

Overheard . . . .

“Hasn’t it been her turn for about nine years now?”

--Browser in Woodland Hills bookstore on Nancy Reagan’s book “My Turn.”