KING CASE AFTERMATH: A CITY IN CRISIS : Receiving mail. Buying milk. Tanking up. Many Angelenos found these ordinary errands had turned into harsh challenges. : Life in the ‘War Zone’ : Rampage in L.A. Disrupts Everyday Routine Nationwide

Panic buying spread through food stores all over Southern California. Armored cars couldn’t make it to many local banks. Near the center of the violence, flames and upheaval, families struggled to get by without electricity.

The normal routines of millions of people’s lives--from the streets of South-Central Los Angeles to as far away as the New York Stock Exchange--were thrown deep into disarray Friday by the aftermath of the Rodney G. King case.

As tumult and fear gummed up the distribution networks of supermarkets, drugstores and government agencies, even something as basic as buying a gallon of gasoline became an impossibility in parts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, mobbed supermarkets ran out of food staples, mail deliveries were cut and businesses missed their payrolls and deadlines.

“There’s no place to shop, no phone, no place to get medicine,” said Evelyn Jones, 31, who lives on 103rd Place, between Central and Century boulevards. “ . . . It’s like a war zone. As soon as the sun goes down, out come the guns.”

At Broadway and West 88th Place, scores of mothers with small children were among a throng of residents waiting in line for hours at the Broadway Station post office. Many said they were there in hopes of getting their first-of-the-month welfare checks--but they also noted that nearby banks were closed and the closest nearby check-cashing service was in ashes.

Adding to the misery was that residences near the center of the uprising were without electricity. Officials of the Department of Water and Power said that about 21,000 homes still lacked power Friday, and repair work was delayed by the need to wait for police escorts.

“We need candles, batteries and flashlights,” said Loletta Lewis, 34, one of the customers waiting at the post office. “My house is all electric. I can’t cook.”

Janice Walker stood nearby, holding her 8-month-old son, Nathaniel. Walker said she feared that the community’s suffering would get worse. “I need juice and Pampers,” Walker said. “I am out of food.”

The despair was also palpable inside the air-conditioned post office, where those fortunate enough to collect their checks had other misfortunes to contend with.

“Everything around me is destroyed,” said 43-year-old Brenda Hollins, who left her 15-year-old daughter at home. “They stole my car from Broadway and Central. The same thugs that are burning and looting stole my car. I had to walk all the way from 76th and Avalon to get here.”

Streets were deemed too dangerous even for armored cars. HomeFed Bank, which had already shut down nine branches for safety reasons, closed its Playa del Rey office early Friday for another reason: It ran out of cash because it couldn’t get its normal armored car delivery.

“It’s horrible what they’ve done,” said Adey Behre, a 37-year-old parking lot attendant, referring to looters and vandals who ravaged stores near her apartment on South Fairfax Avenue near Pico Boulevard. “I’m from Ethiopia, where they have a lot of problems. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Lines formed at gasoline stations in such locales as West Los Angeles and South Pasadena as well as at the few stations that remained open in South Los Angeles. Most of the stations there were closed as Arco, Unocal and other refiners cut off deliveries, forcing residents to get gasoline elsewhere.

The lines caused some tempers to flare. “I’ve had about 15 fights this morning,” said Larry Fulton, owner of Larry’s Unocal at National and Sawtelle boulevards in West Los Angeles.

Andres Longoria, 63, who runs a Shell station in the 1200 block of East Vernon Avenue in South Los Angeles, ran out of gasoline.

Even so, Longoria said he and an employee had been holed up inside the station since the rioting began to protect it from bands of youths who torched a grocery and several other nearby businesses.

The city’s dusk-to-dawn curfew took a huge toll on many restaurants, movie theaters and other nightspots. Jeff Naumann, a manager at Chili’s Grill and Bar in Northridge, said closing early Friday would cost the restaurant $8,000 in business--more than half of what it usually does in a day. For waiters and waitresses, he added glumly, “This is their best night of the week--and they don’t work!”

At the Gage Bowl in Huntington Park, where barely more than a third of the 22 bowling lanes were occupied late Friday afternoon, manager Doug Svela summed up the effects of the unrest this way: “It’s killing us. . . . Ordinarily we’d be full right about now, but nobody’s out there, and of course because of the curfew we’ll have to close in a few minutes.”

Bus riders’ routines were complicated by curfew-shortened schedules and the complete suspension of service in areas such as South-Central Los Angeles and on Sunset Boulevard, where Rapid Transit District buses met with gunfire.

Bus rider Martin Gutierrez, 63, counted himself lucky not to have been stranded downtown on Thursday when the RTD curtailed service late in the afternoon. But on Friday, he rode the bus from near Dodger Stadium to downtown only to find his bank closed and the supermarket where he normally shops boarded up.

At an upscale Alpha Beta in Torrance, the front doors were guarded by clerks who said more shoppers would be allowed in only as others left the store. The wait was just a few minutes, but shoppers seemed stunned nonetheless by the precaution.

“I lived through World War II and thought that was bad, but the fighting never got here,” said one older shopper, who was buying a cart full of bottled water, cat food and other staples. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

Supermarkets “can’t get enough workers. People are buying like hell!” exclaimed Mike Straeter, president of a Santa Monica-based local of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents 5,700 retail employees.

By 10 a.m. Friday, a Ralphs grocery in Century City had run out of turkey and chicken, said shopper Andi Sporkin. “The market is stripped bare,” Sporkin said. “It’s like we’re waiting for the big one.”

The worlds of big-time commerce and high finance felt the reverberations of the Los Angeles violence too. Trading on Wall Street--where the stocks of security companies have jumped in recent days--was slowed by the flood of brokers who went home early.

In New York, rumors swirled about supposed shootings and street violence. Many companies responded by closing their doors early.

Mitchell Marks, a psychologist who flew to New York from Los Angeles to consult on a bank merger, said that among his co-workers, “no one was really scared, but there was a feeling of, ‘Let’s get home and get safe.’ ”

American Airlines said that about half of its daily flights in and out of Los Angeles International Airport were being canceled, but some of the disruption was mitigated as passengers were routed to regional airports in Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario and Orange County. The airline normally has about 60 flights in and out of LAX each day.

In West Los Angeles, attorney Stephen Chrystie said the halt of U.S. mail and other delivery services hampered his ability to prepare and file a potential bankruptcy petition out of state.

“It closes down commerce between lawyers,” Chrystie said. “We were trying to deliver (sworn) declarations to Florida. We couldn’t deliver them, because of the problem with the mails and Federal Express.”

Even the plan to put the new 310 telephone area code fully into effect this weekend was put on hold. Pacific Bell said customers can continue using either the 213 or 310 area codes indefinitely when calling the area.

At firms that fought through the difficulties and stayed open Friday, many employees had trouble concentrating. “People’s minds are elsewhere, and so is mine,” said Stan Ross, managing partner of Kenneth Leventhal & Co., a large accounting and consulting firm in Century City.

But in the business world, perhaps no one was put into a worse position than the headhunters who earn their livings by recruiting executives to move to Los Angeles. Jay V. Berger, an executive recruiter in Pasadena, said a prospect from the Midwest he had been talking to decided this week to drop out of the running for a senior position at a major nonprofit group here.

When Berger asked him why, the executive had a quick reply: “I’d rather deal with tornadoes.”

Contributing to this story were David Willman, Tom Furlong, James Bates, Mary Lou Fulton, Mark Stein, Tom Petruno, Stephen Braun, Carla Lazzareschi, Ken Reich and Denise Gellene.