KING CASE AFTERMATH: A CITY IN CRISIS : Merchants Board Up Valley Shops; 100 Arrested : Violence: Damage to 40 businesses is in the millions. At least eight injuries and seven fires are reported.

Jittery from continuing riots to the south and scattered violence and looting locally, San Fernando Valley residents Friday boarded up vandalized businesses, mounted guard over merchandise or hustled it to safety, stockpiled food and gave way to rage or contemplation.

By late Friday, a partial tabulation of crime reports tallied more than 100 arrests--at least half for felonies--blamed on King verdict violence in the Valley. There have been at least eight injuries and seven fires. In the Van Nuys area alone--one of the hardest-hit communities--there were seven fires and at least 40 businesses were looted, causing property damage “somewhere in the millions of dollars,” a police spokesman said.

National Guard troops rolled in late Friday to protect the Foothill Division police station in Pacoima--scene of an unruly protest Wednesday night--and also began guarding shopping malls.

Fifty-six National Guard troops assigned to the Foothill police division were stationed at the police station and three shopping centers that had been the sites of previous looting and vandalism. A bomb threat Friday afternoon forced a brief evacuation of the Foothill station--where the four officers who beat Rodney G. King were assigned at the time. The San Fernando Valley resident who made the phone threat, however, used the 911 emergency line--which displays the caller’s location on a police screen--and a suspect was arrested.

Larry Jones, 36, of Northridge was arrested 30 minutes after the call on suspicion of making a felony false bomb threat, police said.

Times Valley Edition reporter Jim Herron Zamora was beaten as he observed looters in the 14600 block of Parthenia Avenue in Panorama City on Friday afternoon. One looter fired a pistol shot at him, which missed.

Zamora was treated at Northridge Hospital Medical Center for a swollen jaw, chipped teeth and facial lacerations.

Valley members of the Los Angeles City Council said their offices were flooded with calls from worried or furious citizens, many of them expressing anger at Police Chief Daryl F. Gates or Mayor Tom Bradley, or asking why it had taken so long to deploy the National Guard.

The callers were “worried, fearful and angry,” Councilman Hal Bernson said. “People are genuinely concerned about the safety of their homes, their businesses, their families and for the future of the city.”

Supermarket managers throughout the Valley reported stores swamped with customers, and some were running out of bread.

“People are buying like there’s no tomorrow,” said Ken Charles, assistant manager of a Vons market in Northridge. “They’re buying water like there was an earthquake. The meat case doesn’t even get half full before it’s gone. We’ve got all 10 check stands going and there are more cars pulling up.”

Shoppers loaded up on bread, snack food and barbecue items, said a Chatsworth store manager who asked not to be identified. He said bread supplies ran low at some stores because many bakeries are located in the southern part of the city, where violence disrupted their operations.

Lumberyards reported heavy sales of plywood sheets, which store managers said were being used by business owners to protect windows or board up those that had been broken by looters. At Home Depot in Reseda, where plywood normally accounts for only 5% of sales, the amount jumped to 25%, assistant manager Jim Day said. The store had almost run out of plywood by midafternoon, he said.

Users of the plywood were typified by J. B. Sethi, owner of a 7-Eleven store at Arleta Avenue and Osborne Street in Arleta, who boarded up windows he said were broken late Thursday by about 20 young Latinos who stormed his store with baseball bats.

“We ran and hid in the back room,” said Sethi. “They were in the store about 10 minutes and took mostly beer.”

In Panorama City, site of the Valley’s most serious violence and looting, store owners and managers cleaned up damage and attempted to secure their buildings.

At the Goodyear tire store on Parthenia Street, west of Van Nuys Boulevard, manager Bill Watters said looters Thursday took office machines and telephones as well as tires and wheels. He said he was waiting for permission from the company to send his employees home after his broken glass door and windows were boarded up.

Early Friday, Watters said, police arrested two boys in their early teens who had apparently broken into the nearby Tower Record store on Van Nuys Boulevard. Tower store manager Steve Carrico said the thieves broke a window and stole about $300 in cash and recordings by, among others, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson and opera singer Placido Domingo.

“Somebody probably thought, ‘I’ll get Placido for mom,’ ” Carrico said.

Carrico said the store would remain closed through the weekend after workers finished boarding all the windows. “We’re going to board it up and hope for the best,” he said.

Nearby, Winston tire store manager Jim Kotantoulas and four employees loaded about 900 tires onto a semi-trailer truck to move to a warehouse in Rancho Cucamonga. He said looters took more than 100 of his most expensive tires Thursday night.

“I just want to get my merchandise out of here,” Kotantoulas said. “As soon as the inventory is out of here, we’re out of here.”

Down the street, a crowd remained on watch over the burned-out remains of Smiley’s market, which was torched late Thursday.

The owner of a car stereo and alarm store on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge, who asked that his name not be used, said he had kept a handgun with him since Thursday. He locked his shop entrance, turned off neon signs, moved most of his merchandise to another location and posted a small hand-scribbled sign directing customers to a rear entrance.

At the Vannord Center in Panorama City, merchants swept broken glass and boarded up windows after a rampage by looters Thursday night. A group of about 100 had broken into a grocery store, dry cleaner, liquor store, lingerie shop and electronics shop, at times being chased away by police only to return after officers left on other calls.

Even the center’s 98 Cents store was looted.

Next door, at Paulette’s Boutiquerie, owner Cheryl Firestone waited for workers to cover her broken storefront windows with boards. Looters had stolen from racks of lingerie, leaving merchandise and broken glass strewn throughout the store.

“I can’t believe it,” Firestone said. “People are stopping by asking if they can have stuff for free. One woman stuck her hand in to take something.”

In Sherman Oaks, thieves rammed the Guitar Center’s front door with a car early Thursday morning and stole a 1959 Gibson Les Paul and a 1955 Fender Stratocaster, two vintage electric guitars estimated to be worth $25,000 each. “With the looting ambience in the city, I think someone took the opportunity to steal specific guitars,” manager Peter Schuelzki said.

On Van Nuys Boulevard, windows were boarded up at Adray’s, a discount electronics and appliance store where a window was broken Thursday night. Down the street, owner James Shim boarded up windows to his Van Nuys Discount Swap Meet store and removed merchandise, such as athletic footware and electronic equipment.

In Pacoima, security guards armed with shotguns stood before boarded windows that had been broken Thursday night at the Bargain Foods Warehouse on Laurel Canyon Boulevard just north of Van Nuys Boulevard.

At Tower Gallery on Ventura Boulevard, manager Marinka Sjoberg said broken windows were being boarded up and artworks moved to another location.

Vandals also broke storefront windows on Reseda Boulevard in Reseda, as well as at an athletic shoe store on Sherman Way in Reseda. Looters broke into the Toys R Us in West Van Nuys.

Ezat Nadershaha, owner of a cleaning store in Panorama City, said he lost two wedding dresses to looters. But he was not planning to defend his store at night. “I’m going to go home and sleep,” he said. “I left Iran to escape from this.”

But spurred by such reports, three Reseda store owners said they were considering sleeping in their stores Friday night to protect them.

“Maybe my presence will make a difference,” said Ali Ramin, owner of a television and video installation store on Reseda Boulevard, who said he was thinking of trying to buy a gun. “If I’m not here, there’s nothing I can do to protect my store. I have my whole life here. If they take it, I have nothing.”

Frank Paduano, owner of a Reseda coin and jewelry store, said he has carried a handgun since he was robbed in 1990 and noted that the bakery two buildings away was broken into Thursday night.

Ali Hejazi, owner of the bakery, said robbers broke the glass and took more than $500 from his cash register. He was having no luck getting someone to replace the window, and if it remained broken, he would have to spend the night, he said.

A tip that arsonists have begun to mark Korean stores as targets of firebombings prompted Los Angeles police in the San Fernando Valley on Friday to warn Korean merchants to remove such markings and close early.

According to a tip that was sent to all Los Angeles Police Department patrol units via a computer message, arsonists are “tagging” Korean-owned grocery stores with a four-letter symbol indicating that it will be the target of a firebomb, police said.

Officer Minor Jimenez of the Foothill police station received the warning Friday afternoon on his patrol unit’s computer as he was responding to calls. He and another officer spent most of the afternoon trying to contact Korean grocers.

Jimenez, a senior lead officer who is a liaison to the residents as part of the Valley’s community-based policing program, said the warning came from police in the Northeast Bureau, but he was not sure where police got the tip.

Several Korean grocers said they had not had problems with vandals and planned to close before dark. Some store owners planned to remain in the closed stores to guard against looters.

A block east of the Foothill Division police station in Pacoima was a handmade sign in front of Knight’s Specialty Discount Store: “Pre Looting Sale: Ram Proof Scaffolding.”

The owner, Larry Knight, and his wife have been staying in the shop all night to protect their stock--kitchen items, tools, radios, clothes, furniture, records, cameras, stuffed animals and sports equipment. They put the heavy scaffolding in front to protect the parking lot.

“Last night at maybe about 4 a.m., we could hear someone trying to ram it, but they could not get through,” said Knight. “We were ready if they did, we were loaded, but the scaffolding held.”

“This is my life and my livelihood and I am not going to let anyone take it away,” he said.

Still, the scaffolding is for sale: $100 for one unit and $150 for two. “If someone buys it . . . I’m sure we can find something else that will do,” Knight said.

The rioting and the King verdicts were talked of everywhere.

“This is going to get me back in the civil rights movement,” said Szebelski Freeman, 70, at Sperling Nursery in Calabasas. Freeman, who is black, has cancer and walks with the aid of crutches.

“We all know that what is going on in the streets is wrong, but I can understand the frustration, I know how much it hurts. We all thought that someday justice would come, but it never has,” he said.

“I’m old, but I can still march.”

Julie Russell of Canoga Park held her 3-month-old son, Kyle, as she looked for flowers. Although there had been no trouble in her neighborhood, she was planning to be indoors by dark.

“It could happen anywhere, anytime,” she said. “Look how far it has spread already.”

This story was compiled from reports by Times staff writers David Colker, Richard Lee Colvin, Sam Enriquez, Lorna Fernandes, Hugo Martin, Julio Moran, Amy Pyle, Stephanie Stassel, David Wharton, Carol Watson and Jim Herron Zamora.