Businesses Escape With Relatively Minor Damage : Economy: Most firms were closed for the day, but officials believe the long-term commercial loss may be slight.

The Bay Area was closed for business Wednesday as most workers stayed home and their employers used skeleton crews to clean up and assess the damage after Tuesday’s disastrous earthquake.

But most businesses reported that, despite widespread shattered windows, toppled furniture and broken equipment, damage to commercial structures was relatively slight. Telephone service was restored within hours at most businesses, allowing them to make contact with and reassure their employees and customers.

Many factories, offices and hotels throughout the region were still without electricity or were operating on emergency power systems Wednesday, however, and that--coupled with damaged roads and bridges--prompted government and law enforcement officials to urge people to stay home from work for the day.

Because of the lack of structural damage to most skyscrapers and industrial facilities--many of which were built under strict earthquake codes--most Bay Area employers contacted Wednesday were optimistic that they could reopen as soon as today, if electricity is restored and roads are passable.

A quick resumption of business could prove important for the state as a whole. The Bay Area represents about 25% of the state’s economy, measured in terms of personal income, according to an estimate by First Interstate Bank. A lengthy disruption of that large a segment could negatively affect the economy of the rest of California and the nation, economists said.

Spokesman declined to estimate how much the quake-induced shutdown will cost in terms of lost business, but most heaved a sigh of relief that the damage and economic loss wasn’t much greater, given the magnitude of the temblor and the loss of life.

Most companies cited emergency preparedness plans they have put in place over the past decade for the relative lack of impact on business. Many companies have backup power systems to keep computers running and emergency notification plans to keep customers and employees informed. On Wednesday, as scheduled under most of the emergency plans, many companies called on structural engineers to assess damage to buildings so they could quickly make decisions about when to reopen.

Other than cleanup and damage assessment, a major order of the day for large companies Wednesday was to provide reassurance to those outside the area, including sales and field offices, European divisions and financial analysts in New York.

By early afternoon, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. in Oakland had sent facsimile messages to all of the company’s locations and sales offices outside the Bay Area notifying them that as far as it knew, its employees and offices had all survived the quake in good shape.

But some business officials fretted that the quake will take a significant toll on the Bay Area’s economy, at least in the short term. There was evidence to support that notion Wednesday, as travel agents reported cancellations by travelers who had made earlier reservations to visit San Francisco, and several conventions that were meeting in the city adjourned early and attempted to get their visitors home.

“Everybody I had going to San Francisco canceled or switched to Los Angeles,” said Jane Bliss, owner of Travel As You Like It, a travel agency in New York.

Businessman Bob Linsmayer of St. Paul, Minn., stood outside the venerable St. Francis Hotel on Wednesday afternoon attempting to get transportation to Reno. His convention, the Chief Executives Forum, had decided to switch cities after one day because the St. Francis still had no power and convention meetings had to be canceled.

“Right now, we can’t even assess the amount of damage (to tourism and convention business),” said Flo Snyder, director of the state Office of Tourism. “Of course, there is some immediate impact, but California has come out of these things before. I don’t think there will be a long-term effect.”

San Francisco’s two largest convention facilities, the Civic Auditorium, built in 1915, and the Moscone Convention Center, built in the 1970s, were inspected and pronounced safe Wednesday. But a supercomputing trade show scheduled for the auditorium was delayed and a water pollution control convention at the Moscone Center, which had drawn an estimated 15,000 people to the city, was closed early so that the center could be used as a shelter for those displaced by the quake.

The ports in San Francisco and Oakland were open on Wednesday, the Coast Guard reported, but activity was slow. Few trucks made cargo deliveries to the port area, and many shipping companies had instructed their employees to stay home.

The Coast Guard said there was little serious damage at either port, but that minor damage was extensive. One shipping operation, American President Companies of Oakland, said it was bothered by sporadic power outages throughout the day that disrupted its computerized cargo tracking system. As a result, cargo had to be catalogued the old-fashioned way--by hand.

Grocery and convenience stores scrambled to sweep up literally tons of broken glass, return undamaged products to shelves and find replacements for destroyed or fast-selling items.

The 24-hour chains, such as 7-Eleven stores and Lucky supermarkets, stayed open if possible during the cleanups. Many stores that closed after the quake reopened on Wednesday, with the help of scores of executives, managers and even suppliers and vendors who commonly pitch in during such emergencies.

Lucky Stores said it expected its six markets in the hard-hit Monterey-Salinas-Watsonville area to remain closed perhaps until Friday. Two of its stores that sustained severe losses of goods remained closed through late Wednesday. One store, on 18th Street in Oakland, was structurally damaged in the quake, so its reopening is uncertain.

Most grocery chains said their warehouses held enough perishable products to restock most of their stores--perhaps once. A major problem for some of the stores, however, was simply getting new supplies from warehouses to the stores.

It took most of the day Wednesday and close cooperation with the Highway Patrol for the Great Bay Area division of Southland Corp., parent company of the 7-Eleven franchise chain, to get its first semi-truck from its division headquarters in Pleasanton, in the East Bay, over the Santa Cruz mountains to the 30 or so of the hardest hit of its 309 stores in the Bay Area.

Business officials were hopeful that after the initial shock wears off, any negative effects of the quake on the Bay Area’s economy will disappear. Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, noted that Southern California suffered an unexpected downturn in tourism in 1988, after the Whittier earthquake. But tourism so far this year has rebounded somewhat.

Still, there was concern that the quake’s impact on the economy could be longer lasting than some hopeful officials now predict.

For executives from across the country, already showing reluctance to move to California because of high housing costs and congestion, the quake may have clinched decisions to stay put or move elsewhere, executive recruiters said Wednesday.

“Just as we have the Rose Bowl game here on New Year’s Day, and it’s bright and sunny and it has a tremendous impact on people in Chicago, this has a tremendous impact, unfortunately a negative one,” said John S. Peterson, an executive director in the Los Angeles office of Russell Reynolds Associates, a search firm.

Recruiters in Southern California told of candidates from Chicago, Dallas and Oklahoma who had cited concerns about earthquakes in withdrawing their names Wednesday from consideration for top corporate posts locally. Search firms were pleading with other executives to keep an open mind, noting that there is a risk of facing nature’s wrath wherever one lives.

Gary Kaplan, who heads a Pasadena search firm, predicted that recruiters would find California a tough sale for some time.

“Up until 10 years ago, when we weren’t dealing with other problems--the cost of housing, smog, congestion, gridlock--you could really much more effectively sell around earthquakes,” Kaplan said. “But we are becoming less and less of a desireable area to recruit to.”