   Toni Johnson pulls a tape measure across the front of what was once
a stately Victorian home.
   A deep trench now runs along its north wall, exposed when the house
lurched two feet off its foundation during last week's earthquake.
   A side porch was ripped away.
   The chimney is a pile of bricks on the front lawn.
   The remainder of the house leans precariously against a sturdy oak
tree.
   The petite, 29-year-old Ms. Johnson, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt
as she slogs through the steady afternoon rain, is a claims adjuster with
Aetna Life &amp; Casualty.
   She has been on the move almost incessantly since last Thursday, when an army of adjusters, employed by major insurers, invaded the
San Francisco area to help policyholders sift through the rubble and restore
some order to their lives.
   Equipped with cellular telephones, laptop computers, calculators
and a pack of blank checks, they parcel out money so their clients can
find temporary living quarters, buy food, replace lost clothing, repair
broken water heaters, and replaster walls.
   Some of the funds will used to demolish unstable buildings and clear
sites for future construction.
  Many adjusters are authorized to write checks for amounts up to
$100,000 on the spot.
  They don't flinch at writing them.
  "That's my job -- get {policyholders} what they're entitled
to," says Bill Schaeffer, a claims supervisor who flew in from Aetna
's Bridgeport, Conn., office.
  The Victorian house that Ms. Johnson is inspecting has been deemed
unsafe by town officials.
  But she asks a workman toting the bricks from the lawn to give
her a boost through an open first-floor window.
  Once inside, she spends nearly four hours measuring and diagramming
each room in the 80-year-old house, gathering enough information to estimate
what it would cost to rebuild it.
  She snaps photos of the buckled floors and the plaster that has
fallen away from the walls.
  While she works inside, a tenant returns with several friends
to collect furniture and clothing.
  One of the friends sweeps broken dishes and shattered glass from
a countertop and starts to pack what can be salvaged from the kitchen.
  Others grab books, records, photo albums, sofas and chairs,
working frantically in the fear that an aftershock will jolt the house
again.
  The owners, William and Margie Hammack, are luckier than many
others.
  A few years ago, Mrs. Hammack insisted on buying earthquake insurance
for this house, which had been converted into apartments.
  Only about 20% of California home and business owners carried
earthquake coverage.
  The Hammacks' own home, also in Los Gatos, suffered comparatively
minor damage.
  Ms. Johnson, who works out of Aetna's office in Walnut Creek, an East Bay suburb, is awed by the earthquake's destructive force.
  "It really brings you down to a human level," she says.
  "It's hard to accept all the suffering people are going through, but you have to.
  If you don't, you can't do your job."
  For Aetna and other insurers, the San Francisco earthquake hit
when resources in the field already were stretched.
  Most companies still are trying to sort through the wreckage caused
by Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas last month.
  Aetna, which has nearly 3,000 adjusters, had deployed about 750
of them in Charlotte, Columbia, and Charleston.
  Adjusters who had been working on the East Coast say the insurer
will still be processing claims from that storm through December.
  It could take six to nine months to handle the earthquake-related
claims.
  When the earthquake rocked northern California last week, Aetna
senior claims executives from the San Francisco area were at the company
's Hartford, Conn., headquarters for additional training on how to handle
major catastrophes, including earthquakes.
  Since commercial airline flights were disrupted, the company chartered
three planes to fly these executives back to the West Coast and bring along
portable computers, cellular phones and some claims adjusters.
  Because of the difficulty of assessing the damages caused by the
earthquake, Aetna pulled together a team of its most experienced claims
adjusters from around the country.
  Even so, few had ever dealt with an earthquake.
  Some adjusters, like Alan Singer of San Diego, had been working
in Charleston for nearly four weeks.
  He returned home last Thursday, packed a bag with fresh clothes
and reported for duty Friday in Walnut Creek.
  Offices were set up in San Francisco and San Jose.
  In a few instances, Aetna knew it would probably be shelling out
big bucks, even before a client called or faxed in a claim.
  For example, officials at Walnut Creek office learned that the
Amfac Hotel near the San Francisco airport, which is insured by Aetna, was badly damaged when they saw it on network television news.
  "The secret to being a good adjuster is counting," says Gerardo
Rodriguez, an Aetna adjuster from Santa Ana.
  "You have to count everything."
  Adjusters must count the number of bathrooms, balconies, fireplaces, chimneys, microwaves and dishwashers.
  But they must also assign a price to each of these items as well
as to floors, wallcoverings, roofing and siding, to come up with a total
value for a house.
  To do that, they must think in terms of sheetrock by the square
foot, carpeting by the square yard, wallpaper by the roll, molding by
the linear foot.
  Using a calculator and a unit-price guide for such jobs as painting, plumbing and roofing in each major region of the country, adjusters
can figure out the value of a home in today's market and what it would
cost to rebuild it.
  Sometimes repairs are out of the question.
  When Aetna adjuster Bill Schaeffer visited a retired couple in
Oakland last Thursday, he found them living in a mobile home parked in
front of their yard.
  The house itself, located about 50 yards from the collapsed section
of double-decker highway Interstate 880, was pushed about four feet off
its foundation and then collapsed into its basement.
  The next day, Mr. Schaeffer presented the couple with a check
for $151,000 to help them build a new home in the same neighborhood.
  He also is working with a real-estate agent to help find them an
apartment to rent while their home is being built.
  Many of the adjusters employed by Aetna and other insurers have
some experience with construction work or carpentry.
  But such skills were alien to Toni Johnson.
  Four years ago, she was managing a film-processing shop and was
totally bored.
  A friend mentioned that she might want to look into a position
at Aetna, if she was interested in a job that would constantly challenge
her.
  She signed up, starting as an "inside" adjuster, who settles
minor claims and does a lot of work by phone.
  A year later, she moved to the commercial property claims division.
  She spent a month at an Aetna school in Gettysburg, Pa., learning
all about the construction trade, including masonry, plumbing and electrical
wiring.
  That was followed by three months at the Aetna Institute in Hartford, where she was immersed in learning how to read and interpret policies.
  Her new line of work has some perils.
  Recently, a contractor saved her from falling three stories as
she investigated what remained of an old Victorian house torched by an
arsonist.
  "I owe that contractor.
  I really do," she says.
  As Ms. Johnson stands outside the Hammack house after winding up
her chores there, the house begins to creak and sway.
  The ground shakes underneath her.
  It is an aftershock, one of about 2,000 since the earthquake,
and it makes her uneasy.
  The next day, as she prepares a $10,000 check for the Hammacks, which will cover the cost of demolishing the house and clearing away
the debris, she jumps at the slightest noise.
  On further reflection, she admits that venturing inside the Hammacks
' house the previous day wasn't" such a great idea."
  During her second meeting with the Hammacks, Ms. Johnson reviews
exactly what their policy covers.
  They would like to retrieve some appliances on the second floor, but wonder if it's safe to venture inside.
  Ms. Johnson tells them that, if the appliances can't be salvaged, their policy covers the replacement cost.
  Mr. Hammack is eager to know what Aetna will pay for the house, which has to come down.
  "When will I get that check for a million dollars ?" he jokes.
  The adjuster hadn't completed all the calculations, but says
: "We 're talking policy limits."
  In this case, that's about $250,000.
  It suddenly dawns on Mr. Hammack that rebuilding the house in Los
Gatos, an affluent community in Santa Clara County, may cost more than
Aetna's policy will pay.
  "We can lose money on this," he says.
  "And you didn't want me to buy earthquake insurance," says
Mrs. Hammack, reaching across the table and gently tapping his hand.
  Earthquake insurance costs about $to $ annually for every
$1,000 of value, and high deductibles mean it generally pays only when
there is a catastrophe.
  So, many Californians believe they can get by without it.
  Even Ms. Johnson herself made that assumption.
  "I always knew that the ` Big One ' was coming, but not during
my lifetime," she says.
  Now she says she's thinking of contacting her own insurance agent.
  For Ms. Johnson, dealing with the earthquake has been more than
just a work experience.
  She lives in Oakland, a community hit hard by the earthquake.
  She didn't have hot water for five days.
  The apartment she shares with a 12-year-old daughter and her sister
was rattled, books and crystal hit the floor, but nothing was severely
damaged.
  Her sister, Cynthia, wishes Toni had a different job.
  "We worry about her out there," Cynthia says.
  Last Sunday, Ms. Johnson finally got a chance to water her plants, but stopped abruptly.
  "I realized I couldn't waste this water when there are people
in Watsonville who don't have fresh water to drink."
  She hasn't played any music since the earthquake hit, out of
respect for those who died on Interstate 880 where the roadway collapsed.
