BAY AREA QUAKE : Mayors Were Served Well by 2 Different Styles : Leadership: The top officials of cosmopolitan San Francisco and gritty Oakland faced unexpected challenges during the quake. Both showed that they could handle them.

SAN FRANCISCO — They are as different as the crisis-engulfed cities they lead, these mayors of cosmopolitan San Francisco and gritty Oakland.

Both in style and substance they distinguished themselves when last week’s earthquake not only altered Northern California’s urban landscapes but also political agendas. For each--San Francisco’s Mayor Art Agnos and Oakland’s Mayor Lionel Wilson--the disaster presented unexpected challenges: Tests of leadership and physical stamina rarely demanded of municipal officials.

Agnos, 51, at the height of his public career, completing his first year as San Francisco mayor fell back on skills honed during years as a social worker. He was everywhere, calling for calm, preaching hope, reassuring the homeless and urging aides to use this experience to prepare for an even more destructive quake. He took charge within minutes of the 5:04 p.m. tremor.

Wilson, 74, perhaps at the end of his public career after 12 years as Oakland’s mayor, faced the crisis with a deliberative style perfected during years as a judge and bureaucrat. Though most of the fatalities occurred in his city, he was less visible, touring with politicians, meeting with aides, focusing on the present, acting with characteristic reserve. He spent the first 4 1/2 hours after the quake frustrated and out of touch, stuck in traffic, unable to reach Oakland from San Francisco.

The San Francisco and Oakland city Charters assign very different roles to these two men. Agnos has the powers of a local commander-in-chief. Wilson has only a little more authority than a member of the City Council; most of the authority for government rests with a hired city manager.

But, as their baseball rivalry showed this year, the two Democrats see themselves as standard bearers, cheerleaders for their respective cities. Civic pride and good natured intra-city rivalry were very much on their minds Tuesday night as the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s prepared for the third game of the World Series.

For Oakland, often viewed as San Francisco’s ugly sister, the games were “like a crowning jewel,” said Yvonne Garcia, chief of staff for Wilson. “It was a chance to show off the new and better Oakland.”

One of the biggest container ports on the West Coast and a major tanker port, Oakland has tried, with only limited success, to lure convention business normally attracted to San Francisco and to redevelop its downtown area. The World Series was seen as a valuable marketing vehicle for the city.

When the quake roared and shook the region, Wilson was already inside Candlestick Park for the game. A former semi-pro baseball player and still an avid tennis player, sports are his passion.

Agnos is also an athlete, quick to join a pickup basketball game and a baseball fanatic. As the quake hit, he was riding to the stadium in the back seat of his navy blue Lincoln Town Car.

Both mayors, veterans of many smaller quakes, initially thought that this too was relatively minor. Agnos learned 20 minutes after the quake hit how serious it was and raced back to the city’s emergency command center. Wilson, unable to reach Oakland by phone from the ballpark, began to drive back with three aides, stopping at pay phones along the clogged highways in a futile effort to learn what had happened to his city.

“We were not aware of the magnitude of what was happening,” Garcia said. “All of us (in the car) were calm and stunned.”

Within three hours of the quake, Agnos had surveyed damage from a helicopter, traveled to various locations in the city talking to victims and used the media for calming but urgent messages. Agnos ordered public service announcements in a variety of languages, a move that benefited not only San Francisco residents but those throughout the Bay Area.

“He’s in his element,” said an aide. “He flourishes on situations like this.”

Criticized for much of his first year in office for being “the invisible mayor,” his accessibility to the press during the disaster was a dramatic turnabout for Agnos, who remained visibly involved throughout most of the night.

It was after 10 p.m. Tuesday night when Wilson made it back to Oakland. He was briefed by police and went to the site of the Nimitz Freeway collapse, where most of the dead were yet to be counted. Then he went home.

“I had heard that Mayor Agnos was frequently on the radio and on TV. But I didn’t feel for me it was important to do that in my city,” Wilson said in an interview. “There are different personalities. And (there are) people who have to be with their face on the tube or being photographed. That’s just not my style at all. I was satisfied that everything was done at the scene.”

For much of the remainder of the week, Agnos was on the streets of San Francisco, the sleeves of his blue oxford cloth shirt rolled, his collar open and his soft soled shoes covered with dust.

By choice Wilson has been seen very little except for his twice daily briefings at the site of the collapsed highway rescue and recovery efforts. However the mayor has, without fanfare and without the bright lights of the media, moved around the city working quietly and privately. He has met both with distressed citizens and with the business community.

Wilson is always impeccably dressed in conservative dark suits, carefully knotted ties and polished wing tips. At the highway rescue site he stands in front of a battery of cameras and microphones choosing his words carefully. Oakland’s earthquake response plan, drafted in 1985, assigns the role of chief spokesman for the city to the mayor.

“He’s a nuts and bolts straight shooter,” said Aleta Cannon, an Oakland councilwoman who represents the downtown area.

Agnos, on the other hand, is a quip shooter. When asked before the World Series if he was going to make the traditional wager with the mayor of the the competing team, he said, “There’s nothing in Oakland that I want.”

Offended, Wilson responded with a letter, which Agnos aides described as sharply worded.

Their different styles also came through when Vice President Dan Quayle visited the disaster site last week. Wilson, described by aide Garcia as “warm and gracious,” found time to accompany Quayle. Agnos, confrontational and quick to attack, refused to meet on Quayle’s terms and angrily denounced the vice president for coming for publicity pictures rather than for a true show of concern by the federal government.

For Agnos, the earthquake was, in some ways, a reaffirmation of his governing style. He inherited an earthquake response plan from his predecessor, Dianne Feinstein and ordered it refined, reworked and rehearsed. And now that it has been tested, he wants it revised to incorporate lessons learned last week.

One of those lessons, Agnos said, came out of the time he spent with residents of the hard-hit Marina District.

“We have to immediately get a system to deal with a phenomenon that we didn’t know would exist, a disaster that doesn’t completely wipe out all the buildings,” said Agnos after confronting citizens angry that they could not get personal possessions out of buildings threatened with collapse.

The San Francisco mayor has already held one meeting with aides to begin planning for the next major earthquake and assessing how it will shape the remaining three years of his Administration.

It’s too early for such planning by Wilson.

“Right now we are dealing with the present,” he said at week’s end. “As soon as we deal with the present we will make future plans. We are gathering information but we are concentrating on the present,” Wilson said. Oakland’s plan, however, is routinely revised quarterly.

“His immediate concern is the safety of the (collapsed) highway,” Wilson aide Garcia said. “He’s more concerned with the present situation. He still has not had time to visit any shelters.”

Wilson, whose public image is courtly and starched, displayed a rare flash of emotion Saturday, when survivor Buck Helm was pulled from the rubble of the Nimitz Freeway. “This is a wonderful feeling,” he said immediately after the rescue.

Agnos is hands on and seems to thrive on the stress and the challenges it brings.

Wounded twice in the chest in 1973 by a gang known as the Zebra killers, Agnos joked as he was being wheeled into surgery, flirting with the attractive woman intern who was straddling his body, ripping his clothes off and assessing his wounds.

“All my adult life I’ve been calm under pressure . . . I’ve always had that asset,” Agnos said. “I turn on my clinical protection from the emotions of what’s happening so I can concentrate on doing the best thing for the people I’m trying to help.”