Citizen Soldiers, Officials Scramble for Information on U.S. Call-Up : Buildup: The uncertainty prompts Mayor Bradley to order a study of the possible effect on the city’s work force.

The order calling up almost 50,000 reservists has left thousands of citizen soldiers scrambling for information and prompted government agencies in Los Angeles and across the nation to study the possible impact of a larger mobilization on the civilian work force.

Officials at the Armed Forces Reserves Center at Los Alamitos said there is a good chance that at least one of the center’s 105 units will be activated. The Orange County base is the headquarters of the Army, Marine, Seabee and National Guard reservists.

The immediate need, Defense Department officials say, has been for medical personnel and cargo handlers.

The uncertainty prompted Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday to order the city’s Personnel Department to study the possible effect on the city’s work force. More that 450 police officers and about 65 firefighters are members of the military reserves.

At a news conference, Councilman Nate Holden urged President Bush to hold off calling local police and firefighter reservists to the Middle East so they can fight crime at home. “Crime is up 12% in the City of Los Angeles and 60% in the county. We have a war raging here,” Holden told reporters.

Bradley, at a separate news conference, said he thought Holden’s action was premature.

“Let’s determine the facts before we jump. I haven’t seen any indication that we have got a problem,” Bradley said. He added, “We ought not to scare the people of this community” by suggesting there might be a shortage in the police and fire departments if the reservists are called.

Los Angeles school officials said a survey of vacation records indicated that about 100 of the school district’s 30,000 classified, or non-classroom, employees are reservists. It is unclear how many teachers and other certificated employees could be called, school district spokesman Sheldon Erlich said.

As in the Vietnam War, the government could mitigate the potential impact by granting exemptions to teachers, Erlich said.

Throughout the nation, the prospect of war has spawned a lot of speculation among reservists. While the immediate need is for medical staff and cargo handlers, if a desert war breaks out, one officer noted, specialized combat units such as a Marine Corps anti-aircraft squadron based in Pasadena could be called.

But speculation, military officials warn, often gives way to rumor.

“We spend an awful lot of time squelching rumors,” said Army Guardsman Lt. Col. Willis Richards, operations training officer with an armored division in Tupelo, Miss. Many of the unit’s 3,900 troops have telephoned in search of word on whether they will be put on active duty. “Things are a little tense,” Richards said.

Like their counterparts in all the states, Mississippi’s standby troops are on self-imposed alert status.

The waiting seems harder to take than knowledge they are going.

In Georgia, which has 30,000 standby troops, many are “pretty anxious,” said Ken Davis, public affairs officer with the state’s Department of Defense. “A lot of people have said their bags are packed, just in case. No one relishes the idea of going into a hostile environment, but everyone is trained, and they’re willing and ready to go.”

Davis said the skills of the reservists “pretty much run the gamut,” including mechanized infantry, military police, medics, communications specialists and engineers. It is “really hard to say” who will go where, he said.

Although none of the reservists knew Thursday whether they would be called, those with certain skills believed they had a better than even chance of going on active duty.

“I’m not making any dinner reservations or buying any new suits--let’s put it that way,” said Dr. Louis Varela, a member of the 4005th Hospital Detachment, which could replace active-duty medical staff at Darnall Army Hospital at Ft. Hood, Tex.

Coast Guard reservists have already been called up from the 7th District, which includes Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and Puerto Rico. Capt. Thomas E. Sims, commander of the Coast Guard Reserve’s Miami Group, said he and other officers late Wednesday began to notify by telephone those summoned to active duty. He declined to say how many of the 7th District’s 1,400 reservists were being called up, or to disclose their duty stations.

But one source said that Coast Guard reservists, many of whom specialize in loading explosives onto ships and in intelligence dealing with domestic terrorism, would assume the posts of active-duty guardsmen and guardswomen sent to the Middle East.

Asked about the reaction of those reservists he has called to active duty, Sims said Thursday that it was “99.5% positive. Ready to go. A few have legitimate hardships, like their wife is about to give birth. But the majority know where they’re going, and what to do.”

In Houston, Dr. Brian Zachariah, an emergency room doctor at Hermann Hospital who also is a reservist in the 491st Medical Clearing Company, said officials last week telephoned him to make sure they could contact him if necessary. “They have my office, home, pager and car phone,” he said. “I am definitely reachable.”

The rumors fly furiously, several reservists said, pulling them back and forth between belief that they will go and that they will not.

“One day it’s, ‘We’re going to be called up tomorrow, so be ready,’ ” said Zachariah, “and the next day it’s ‘Oh, maybe we won’t be called after all.’ ”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” said Army Maj. William Harris, a reservist pilot with a medical unit in Miami. “I’m not anxious until something happens. When you fly, you can’t worry in advance. You just deal with things when they happen.”

Harris reported from Los Angeles and May from Atlanta. Staff researchers Lianne Hart in Houston, Edith Stanley in Atlanta and Mike Clary in Miami contributed to this story.