EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Taking Stock of the Losses : Manufacturing: Thousands of small industrial firms are struggling to recover.

The Northridge earthquake hit Devon Industries, a maker of medical supplies in Chatsworth, like a bomb.

In a matter of seconds, the building’s concrete roof parking lot collapsed into the 45,000-square-foot main manufacturing plant, burying the firm’s machinery, inventory and injection molds in tons of debris.

“When I saw it the first time, I went home and I cried,” said Dan Sandel, the company’s owner. “Then I came back and said we have to put it back together. What else can you do?”

The problem: Devon, which owns its own building, had no earthquake insurance because it was too expensive. Now Sandel wonders where he will find the estimated $5 million to $10 million he needs to rebuild.

Most of the attention following the Jan. 17 quake has focused on the suffering of displaced residents and disruptions to the area’s freeway system. But another story has been quietly unfolding: that of the industrial and commercial disruption caused by the quake.

Thousands of firms like Devon were hurt by the quake--little-known industrial firms near the epicenter that are not glamorous but nevertheless provide good-paying jobs and are a key part of the regional economy.

As these firms clean up and make repairs, their supporters argue that too little attention is being paid to their plight.

About 177,000 firms lie within 20 miles of the earthquake’s epicenter and employ more than 1.6 million people--more than 200,000 of them in manufacturing, according to Dun & Bradstreet, the business information company.

With Southern California in its fourth year of recession, many of those firms were showing signs of financial strain even before the quake, according to Dun & Bradstreet economist David T. Kresge.

Making matters worse, many have little or no insurance. “This could mean a long and troubled recovery for these businesses, if they can recover at all,” Kresge said.

The Los Angeles Building and Safety Department estimated that 4,068 commercial structures suffered earthquake damage at an estimated cost of $582 million. But the damage is probably more extensive: So far, about 42,000 businesses of all kinds have requested disaster assistance loan packages, said John Rooney, president of the Valley Economic Development Center.

Rooney said many of the firms will fall through the cracks of disaster assistance programs. The limit for most Small Business Administration disaster loans is $1.5 million.

Federal officials say they are doing all they can to help quake victims. “I’ve heard this a lot--that this program doesn’t fit, that program doesn’t fit,” Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown said. “You’ve got to put programs together in order to achieve your purpose.”

Without aid, many stricken firms may be forced to move out of the state or close, business executives said.

“I know we’re all focusing on housing and rebuilding the freeways, but the problem is that all these companies out there translate into good-paying jobs, which we can’t afford to lose,” said Benjamin Reznik, a Sherman Oaks lawyer and past chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “And we’re about to lose them . . . if we can’t help them get back on their feet.”

For some, like Devon, the quake may mean the permanent loss of jobs. Before the quake, Devon employed 350 people in Chatsworth who made plastic molded surgical supplies, bringing in more than $60 million in annual sales.

Now the company has moved production to plants in Ohio and elsewhere in Southern California. But Sandel has been forced to lay off 106 of his workers indefinitely.

He is seeking help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the SBA and his bank for loans. But, like other afflicted executives, he worries about the effect such loans will have on his ability to do business.

“What’s really required,” he said, “is a special reconstruction fund, with low interest rates . . . outside of the normal requirements of an ongoing concern for day-to-day operations.”

For others with less damage, the quake nevertheless means delays and setbacks. Gary Swanson arrived at the Banner Pharmacaps manufacturing plant in Chatsworth to a sticky, smelly mess the morning of the quake.

Swanson, corporate vice president of the $45-million company that makes gelatin vitamin and medicinal capsules, found the floor covered in half a foot of greenish goo spilled from holding vats. In a warehouse, boxes of finished capsules had fallen off racks into the aisles and lay in piles four feet deep.

It took eight days to clean the plant, and only now is it getting back to full production. Swanson figures the 250-employee company’s output has been set back about a month. While executives are still tallying the costs, he says they will be at least $1 million, only part of it insured.

“We were running at full capacity as it was, so there’s very little we can do to catch up,” Swanson said. “It’s a bit of an uphill battle.”

For some firms, the quake may be the factor that finally propels them out of Los Angeles.

Take Hill Industries, the parent firm of Hill Aviation Logistics and Hill Aviation & Defense, which makes parts for military and civilian aircraft, including Bell helicopters.

The firm’s leased 70,000-square-foot building in Chatsworth sustained major structural damage when walls bowed out, causing ceiling beams to slip off their supports and opening gaps in the roof.

Subsequent rains inundated offices and the back shop. Company officials complain that repairs have been delayed because city inspectors have arrived during off hours when no one was around.

Executives have been relocated to safer rooms, and production has resumed on a limited basis to fill orders. The firm employs about 20 people and has just under $6 million in annual sales.

The company, which had been weathering the region’s defense industry cutbacks by restructuring, had been considering moving to Carlsbad to cut costs, spokeswoman Jennifer A. McKissick said, and the quake adds one more reason to go.

“If we hadn’t been planning on moving,” she said, “it would not have prompted us to do so.”

For others, the quake forced quick improvising.

The temblor virtually demolished an industrial warehouse-office building in Woodland Hills, which housed two toy companies and a computer firm, sending the roof crashing down through false ceilings.

Days later, Arnie Rubin, president of Funrise Toy Corp., gingerly picked through the debris on the sodden carpet of the suite that once housed his company’s headquarters, now open to the blue sky.

Foot-thick beams and six-inch water mains now rest ominously on desks or chairs where workers would have been sitting had the quake struck four hours later. The company’s products still sit in soggy boxes on warehouse shelves: tiny fire engines, ambulances and medical evacuation helicopters.

Rubin has wasted little time in moving his business and its 30 employees out of the wrecked building and into white tents in the parking lot, which will be the firm’s home for the next three months. Fortunately, he said, most of Funrise’s losses were insured.