AFTERMATH OF THE RIOTS : Some Will Rebuild; Others Just Want Out

LONG BEACH —  Cambodian customers bustled up and down the aisles of Riverside Market Monday while store managers took inventory--unfazed by the plywood panels that covered the shattered front windows of the Anaheim Street shop.

It was almost business as usual for Lyn and Quang Tran, who run the store for Lyn Tran’s brother. “We will stay open,” promised Quang Tran, who had added three security guards to watch over the market at night. “We’re not scared.”

The commercial heart of Long Beach’s large Cambodian community, Anaheim Street was one of the hardest hit by the looting and firebombing that hopscotched around the western side of the city last week. Shop after shop, some scorched, were boarded up in the aftermath of the rampages.

But Tran and his colleagues--refugees from the murderous civil war that tore apart their homeland--were vowing to stay put and rebuild in their adopted community.

“Cambodian people are here,” stressed Him S. Chhim, executive director of the Cambodian Assn. of America, which is staffing a 24-hour hot line at its local office to help businesses get through the crisis.

Long Beach struggled to its feet this week, recovering from the worst wave of civil unrest in the city’s history. On Anaheim Street, Pacific and Atlantic avenues, Long Beach Boulevard and 7th Street, businesses reopened and took stock of the destruction, trying to figure out what to do next. Hundreds of volunteers worked through the weekend clearing rubble from sidewalks and parking lots.

The curfew was lifted Tuesday, and weary police and firefighters returned to their normal shifts. The National Guard moved on, although some of the Marines called in to keep the peace remained.

Some predicted that last week’s rampage would drive out businesses and homeowners who were complaining about crime and declining neighborhoods long before the sky was lit by the fires of arsonists. Others said the pillaging left them more determined than ever to try to make Long Beach--an ethnic microcosm of Los Angeles--work.

Much of the city emerged unscathed from the rioting, yet the local toll was still sobering. One person killed, 361 injuries, 159 buildings damaged or destroyed, and 1,221 riot-related arrests. The damage to buildings alone, without the contents, is estimated at $18 million.

As in Los Angeles, the destruction rolled over areas that were in many cases already on their knees economically. In recent years, vacancies and decline have been spreading down Long Beach Boulevard, where the Danica furniture store was torched. Revitalization efforts were beginning to bud in the Wrigley business district, where a number of Pacific Avenue stores were looted and burned. Empty lots awaiting redevelopment are scattered up and down Atlantic Avenue, where Hanson’s Market was left a smoldering hulk.

“It made my neighborhood very sad and confused,” said Doris Topsy-Elvord, a Civil Service commissioner and City Council candidate who lives not far from Hanson’s. “We didn’t have very much anyway and now it seems we have even less.”

Nonetheless, Topsy-Elvord and others hoped that there would be a bright side. “If there’s a silver lining, it’s perhaps that there is an opportunity for accelerated redevelopment in those areas,” observed Deputy City Manager Henry Taboada.

Because the greater Los Angeles area has been declared a federal disaster area, the city and state can skip many of the lengthy requirements for establishing redevelopment zones. The city had already been putting together redevelopment projects for many of the areas that were looted, such as Long Beach Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue, and will now expand the projects.

“With the additional destruction, it only makes it more urgent to put it in place,” said Community Development Director Susan Shick, who plans to ask the City Council next week to start emergency redevelopment action.

At the same time, the city is opening an Emergency Business Assistance Center, where representatives of state, federal and county agencies will offer advice and financial help to businesses that suffered losses in the disturbances. The center, which officially opens Friday, will be staffed from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the California Recreation Center at 1550 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave.

Councilman Clarence Smith, whose 6th District was the scene of a lot of damage, said he will work to get businesses to reopen and even rebuild better shops--except for the liquor stores. Those, he said, he will encourage to move elsewhere.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, members also passed a resolution urging a Los Angeles County grand jury to investigate why Los Angeles and state authorities did not respond more quickly to the riots. “This is not a witch hunt,” said Councilman Ray Grabinski, who proposed the resolution. “It’s a blueprint for next time.”

Grabinski speculated that the slow response in Los Angeles helped spur the Long Beach rioting, which was at its worst last Thursday night, a day after disturbances erupted in Los Angeles. Officials were also concerned at the delay in getting National Guard troops into Long Beach.

City Manager James C. Hankla asked the National Guard for help about 6:30 Thursday evening, when unrest began to spread across the city. At the same time, he declared a state of emergency and imposed a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. But the guard did not arrive until Friday afternoon, after the worst violence had subsided.

“I think we could have sustained much less damage than we did, had the guard been in place,” Taboada said. Complaints have abounded about the guard’s delayed arrival in Los Angeles, and state officials have conceded that there were problems in getting the soldiers on the streets.

Until Thursday night, Taboada said, local officials thought they could keep a lid on the city. “We held off declaring a state of emergency or a curfew because we had no reason to believe we couldn’t control it. At 6:30 (Thursday night) it became obvious we were going to experience something similar to Los Angeles.”

In the past week, authorities have arrested more than 1,000 people on riot-related charges ranging from theft to curfew violations. Local courts remained open through the weekend to arraign the suspects, many of whom remain in jail, unable to make the minimum $10,000 bail set for the looting offenses. With the jails full, suspects are also packed into the courthouse lockup.

Dozens of anonymous phone calls have led Long Beach Police and sheriff’s deputies to piles of stolen loot, some of it still with price tags. Recovered bicycles, furniture, stereo equipment and television sets are piled in a municipal garage warehouse.

In the looters’ wake, dazed business owners are trying to sort through the debris of their lives’ dreams.

“I came from my country with nothing and worked very hard,” said 37-year-old Xuan Lam, who watched in horror Thursday night as looters first raided his clothing shop and then started a fire that ravaged the shop and his nearby food market at 10th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

“Everything’s gone,” lamented Lam, who labored as a roofer to save nearly $5,000 to rent the store space. He said he wants to reopen if the landlords rebuild. “When you find a place where you’re making money you want to stay.”

Over on Long Beach Boulevard, the assistant manager of a looted bicycle shop said the owner would probably head for a different neighborhood, in or near Long Beach. “We’ve been thinking of moving out for a while,” said Matt Vogler of Jones Bicycle, noting that the street has been going downhill. “Now we have a chance to.”

A local commercial developer also said his allegiance to Long Beach was fading.

“Half of the people in my circle of friends have moved out of this city, and without exception all the others are talking about it--myself included,” he said, adding that he was looking for a home elsewhere before the riots, which have only underscored his interest in leaving Long Beach.

Tim Lee, a 42-year-old city worker who lives in the Wrigley District, was left with a different resolve.

When he looked out his 10th-floor office window at City Hall Friday and saw smoke rising from block after block, Lee said he cried and realized how much he cares for the city.

“I would hope people would reach the conclusion that there is no place where they can run, that we should stand together where we are.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Bettina Boxall and Roxana Kopetman, and community correspondents Kirsten Lee Swartz and Susan Paterno. It was written by Boxall.