BUSINESS IMPACT OF THE QUAKE : Charitable Business : From Cash to Goods, Firms Join Quake Relief Efforts

Businesses from across the United States and the Pacific opened their checkbooks and warehouses to supply goods and services to aid victims of Tuesday’s earthquake in the San Francisco area in one of the nation’s largest disaster relief efforts.

The contributions ranged from multimillion-dollar cash donations to free bottled water, batteries and even $50,000 worth of gasoline power generators given by Kawasaki Motors Corp. U.S.A. in Irvine.

“Since we are a part of the community we wanted to do what we could to help out,” said Rayovac Corp. spokesman John Daggett, whose Madison, Wis.-based company donated 700 flashlights to senior citizens without power and 2,000 batteries and lanterns to Bay Area police and emergency personnel. “We have a distribution center (nearby) in Hayward and we felt they weren’t doing any good just sitting in there.”

While federal and private aid officials have not compiled figures on donations coming from corporations, most agencies report that money is coming in from companies at a pace that should rival other devastating natural disasters.

“The money is coming in faster than we can count; people are even calling down here to us because the phones are so busy they can’t get through to the Bay Area,” said Lois Gomez, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles office of the American Red Cross.

The Golden Gate Chapter of the American Red Cross said that it has received close to $3 million from 11 firms. The agency said it expects to spend more than the $42 million spent so far to aid victims of Hurricane Hugo. Although individual donations will make up a fair share of that amount, officials said business has also rushed to the rescue.

Among the largest donors was Anheuser-Busch Cos.

The St. Louis-based brewery said its charitable foundation will immediately donate $2 million to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The company also pledged to donate about $200,000 in baked goods from its Kilpatrick Bakery in Oakland as well as furnish 15,000 to 20,000 T-shirts, jackets, sweat shirts and sweaters emblazoned with the Anheuser-Busch product logos.

“This is strictly something we want to do to help,” said Jerry E. Ritter, a vice president at Anheuser-Busch. “There’s no amount of money that we could have come up with that would really make a dent in the Bay Area.”

Charitable aid experts generally applauded the business community’s response to the earthquake tragedy but noted that not all corporate donations are made out of altruism.

“Some of them make contributions out of a long-range interest in the community, others out of short-range public relations,” noted Robert O. Bothwell, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy in Washington.

Some aid has come in unusual forms and from unusual places.

Fujitsu America Inc., the San Jose-based subsidiary of the giant Tokyo-based electronics firm, donated 200 cellular telephones valued at $230,000 to Bay Area Cellular Telephone Co. and gave $100,000 to San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery’s earthquake relief fund.

Another big donation was sent directly from Japan by Toyota Motor Corp, the parent company of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. It contributed $500,000 to support relief efforts.

General Motors Corp. also pledged $500,000 and said it would match contributions from its employees up to $3 million.

Meanwhile, Lucky and Alpha Beta Stores began distributing 70,000 containers of free drinking water with the cooperation of Arrowhead and Black Mountain Water.

In an offer that perhaps made the most of blending good will and good business, Glendale-based Public Storage Inc. offered displaced earthquake victims one-month’s free storage at its three Bay Area facilities.

“I think that’s a wonderful idea!” said Bothwell of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. “I’ve seen lots of people on the news . . . camping out on the front lawn. I’m sure they’d want some place to store their things so that they could move around.”