Country Girds for Potential Terrorism : Threat: With winds of war blowing, precautions intensify from coast to coast.

On a day when Iraqi missiles struck Israel, fears of terrorism hit home in the United States as schools, office buildings and other facilities were evacuated after bomb scares, bridges were closed and police scrambled to keep up with a growing number of calls from an alarmed public.

Thursday evening, a California manhunt ended with the arrest in San Francisco of an Iraqi man authorities want to question about suspected terrorist activities.

Although no violent terrorist acts occurred, a spreading mood of uncertainty and anxiety gripped the American public as concerns deepened that Iraqi-trained terrorists might bring the war here. As alarms grew, many local, state and federal law enforcement agencies found themselves inundated with tips from the public about possible threats.

“We’ve been so busy responding to the surge of bomb calls, sending our people everywhere to check them out, that we haven’t had much time to do anything else,” said Lt. Ron Brown, a Los Angeles police spokesman.

The calls came from every quarter.

In glitzy Beverly Hills, for instance, shopkeepers and customers were evacuated as the sheriff’s bomb squad ran a robot machine down trendy Rodeo Drive to remove a suspicious “gift” package that later turned out to be “innocent in nature.”

At the Federal Building in the Santa Ana Civic Center, about 900 Internal Revenue Service and other government workers were evacuated after a telephone bomb threat was received and anti-war protesters demonstrated on the sidewalk outside.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad conducted a sweep of the nine-story building but found no incendiary devices, officials said.

In San Francisco, FBI agents arrested David Azawi, 35, in his apartment Thursday “without incident,” officials said. He was named in warrants accusing him of failing to appear in court on earlier federal charges of carrying a pipe bomb in public.

Azawi, also known as Duraid Jafar-Azawi, was taken into custody at 4:30 p.m., according to Special Agent Barbara Madden, and federal officials said he will be arraigned today.

Richard W. Held, special agent in charge, said that the FBI has no information that Azawi is involved in terrorism, but that the agency plans to interview him to determine if he presents a security threat. Authorities discounted reports that twice this week he had driven a black Mazda near the gates of two Southern California military installations.

In October, Azawi was stopped in San Luis Obispo, where an apparent explosive device was found in the trunk of his car. The manhunt began after he failed to appear in court on charges stemming from that incident.

“We need to be careful that we don’t associate someone who is accused of a crime and who also happens to be from Iraq as a terrorist,” Held said.

The arrest came as FBI agents continued their efforts to locate and interview 3,000 Iraqi nationals with expired visas to ascertain why they continue to remain in the United States.

“There’s no roundup, just interviews,” an FBI source in Washington emphasized. “A lot of these people could be dissenters to Saddam Hussein, and it’s not the intention of the United States to put them in harm’s way.”

Such persons can be expelled for security reasons, but a leader in the Iraqi-American community, UCLA Prof. Yasin Al-Khalesi, suggested that many of them were caught in a dilemma.

He said they might be unable or unwilling to return to Iraq because of the war, and at the same time be afraid that if they asked for visa extensions, they would be turned down.

“I would assume that because they came for a visit, they are afraid to go back to Baghdad,” the professor said.

Throughout the country, officials took careful measures to prevent attacks on what would become likely targets of terrorism.

Operators of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline tightened personnel inspections and installed electronic monitoring devices along the 800-mile line. And in Florida, crews preparing for the Super Bowl in Tampa later this month built a concrete barricade around the football stadium to stop any vehicles from smashing through.

In Washington, D.C., trash cans and ashtrays were removed from some public areas at the Dulles International Airport; even pilots were having their identification checked carefully. Five thousand government workers were evacuated from the federal Environmental Protection Agency after a bomb scare there, one of 16 bomb threats received in the nation’s capital.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that war with Iraq poses “the greatest threat of terrorism we’ve probably had” in the United States.

“We know that there are a lot of people out there who are sponsored by Iraq and others,” he said. “We also have a lot of free-lancers, people who feel very, very strongly and emotionally, and in some cases they may be the most difficult to detect.”

Southern California was not immune to the disruptions caused by fears that terrorists might strike.

Downtown traffic in San Diego was jammed by a morning bomb threat, and the first floor of the County Courthouse was closed for an hour.

In the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County, officials at Edwards Air Force Base and Air Force Plant 42 imposed more stringent identity checks for civilian and military workers entering the sites.

At Edwards, about 95 miles northeast of Los Angeles, officials reported that thousands of employees arriving for work Thursday morning faced waits of 20 minutes to an hour as cars backed up at the base’s three entry checkpoints because of security checks.

At the Los Angeles Police Department, Sgt. Dan Holmes said that a new anti-terrorist telephone hot line--(213) 485-2570--was receiving numerous calls, and that even before the Iraqi missile attack on Israel, authorities estimated that about five calls an hour merited further investigation. He said many of the calls are from tipsters with reports of possible suspects who have guns, or of gun shops selling weapons to potentially dangerous people.

Cmdr. George A. Morrison, the department’s chief of staff, met Thursday with 125 city department heads in Los Angeles. While urging them to be cautious, he also advised: “Don’t get paranoid. But at the same time, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.”

The outbreak of war also prompted a rash of calls to private security companies. “Our phones are ringing off the hook,” said Pete Sawyers, director of marketing for the Pinkerton agency in Van Nuys.

In an example of how alert the public has become, the manager of the Louis Vuitton luggage store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills arrived shortly before 10 a.m. to find a sealed shopping bag in the front doorway. Above the package, taped on the door, was a piece of notebook paper with the word gifts written in blue ink.

A team of deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arson and explosives detail closed off the streets and evacuated shoppers from stores in the immediate vicinity.

The mysterious paper bag was picked up by a remote-controlled robot with a retractable arm and taken to a vacant lot in nearby Franklin Canyon.

There, after detonating the still-sealed bag, deputies sifted through the remnants and determined that the bag had contained a pillow and a blank diary.

“There is nothing to indicate it was a terrorist act,” said Beverly Hills Police Lt. Frank Salcido.

Whether or not the gesture was meant to frighten, it did.

“Fake or not fake, these kinds of acts can damage you,” said Behaz Mahdavi, senior art consultant at a nearby gallery. “They can create such anxiety in the community. . . . With all that’s going on, people aren’t comfortable talking business. Everyone is paying attention to the war.”

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Engineer Donald Manning said city firefighters were taking extra precautions when responding to emergency calls. “Unfortunately,” he told the Board of Fire Commissioners on Thursday, “explosive devices don’t look like bombs. They look like 50-gallon drums or a plumber’s pipe.”

And, he added: “Anyone can leave a package at a station.”

Similar precautions were taken around the country.

In San Francisco, a Bay Area Rapid Transit District police officer noticed a duffel bag in the bottom of a trash receptacle at the system’s Civic Center station, near where demonstrators have laid siege to the Federal Building, BART spokesman Sy Mouber said.

The BART officer alerted the San Francisco police bomb squad, which determined that the bag was empty, and the station was reopened, Mouber said.

Officials at the Atlanta airport taped all mailboxes shut, hoping to avert the placement of any bombs. In Detroit, bomb scares closed a bridge between that city and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. And Utah State University at Logan closed early after bomb threats.

Times staff writers Laurie Becklund, John Chandler, Sonni Efron, Martha Groves, John H. Lee, Ronald J. Ostrow, Ronald L. Soble and Mark A. Stein contributed to this report.