A CITY IN CRISIS : For Most, Life Stayed Eerily Normal : Effects: Yes, there were minor inconveniences, frayed nerves, the smell of smoke. But the majority of Angelenos were scarcely affected.

Dramatic television scenes of Los Angeles ablaze have sent worried relatives Back East and Up North to their telephones, eager to learn more about the dangers facing loved ones here. But in the midst of turmoil, life has been almost normal for many residents, affected only by minor inconveniences, frayed nerves and the frightening smell of smoke.

To be sure, some got a few unscheduled days off work as businesses shut down. Commuting patterns were altered and social events canceled. Door locks were checked and security systems tested.

And, of course, favorite television shows were preempted by massive coverage of the riots following the verdicts in the Rodney G. King case.

Otherwise, life is and was eerily normal for many people in the varied megalopolis the nation considers Los Angeles, but which residents know as Seal Beach or Northridge or Sierra Madre. Whether the fires and looting were an entire valley or just a few boulevards away, the distance was enough for yard sales and picnics and baseball games to continue. Those relieved Southern Californians now know that normal can be a very nice word.

The astonishing riots and fires were just a few miles away from 85-year-old Jimmy Thompson’s East Long Beach home. But that didn’t stop him from taking his wife out to dinner Thursday night. True, the couple had to try three restaurants before they found one that was open. But they had a nice dinner when they did, at the Airport Marriott in Long Beach.

“We just drove down there from our place,” Thompson recalled Saturday. “No trouble. There were quite a few people in there. Then we came home and turned on the TV, and they were raising hell out there.”

Also in East Long Beach, Jean Horton and her daughter, Pat, could see the haze of smoke hanging over the city’s north and southwest. But the only impact on their lives came when they tried to rent a movie later on and couldn’t find an open video store. That made Pat Horton think, “Wow, it really wasn’t that far away.”

In suburban La Canada Flintridge, a dozen teen-agers from Flintridge Preparatory School spent Saturday washing cars to raise money for their Students Against Drunk Driving club. “People came up and said it was nice to see we’re doing something like this in light of all the chaos,” said English literature teacher and club sponsor Pat Golson, who, like the students, wore a T-shirt that said, “Think Life,” to encourage safe driving.

The students attend an expensive, multiethnic school in a predominantly white community and, in many ways, are removed from the violence. Still, Golson, who is black, said the verdicts and rioting did touch them. The school’s performance of “Carousel” was canceled Thursday. And many classes discussed the King case.

Ninth-grader Afnahn Khan, 14, whose parents are both physicians and who was scrubbing a LeSabre Limited, said: “We live up in the hills with a pretty good view, but it was all smoke on Thursday. You couldn’t see anything. Someone I know, their car got hit when they were at the Lakers’ game Wednesday. That made it more real for me.”

Tiny Sierra Madre in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills is about 18 miles from downtown Los Angeles, but it felt like half a world away on Saturday. Gone was the smoke that had wafted up from the Los Angeles fires on Thursday. The Sierra Madre Little League game between the White Sox and Red Sox started on schedule at 3 p.m., even though the league’s Thursday games in Pasadena were canceled as a precaution.

“We’re a pretty remote community up here. Riots and unrest, it just doesn’t happen here,” said Little League manager Ralph Griffin before running onto the playing field. “But I don’t think the feelings of people were any different here than those in Compton and South-Central. The verdict and the violence were both a bad deal.”

At nearby Howie’s Ranch Market, store manager Bob Quarnstrom said his business had doubled since Wednesday. Avoiding large chain stores near where they work in other areas of Southern California, Sierra Madre residents were doing their shopping close to home. And on Saturday, the market had to rush around to fill catered lunch and dinner orders for 400 California National Guard troops headquartered in nearby Arcadia.

“To us, it was a blessing in disguise. But you feel so bad about the whole thing,” said Quarnstrom, 46. “You could see fear in the people’s faces in the checkout lines Thursday.”

Joyce Krauss, 63, held a long-planned yard sale in front of her home on First Street in Seal Beach on Saturday. Games, bowling pins and picture frames were laid out for inspection. “It’s been a very well-attended yard sale. There have been a lot of families with children coming by, and the children have had a good time going through the toys,” she said.

Still, the riots in neighboring Long Beach were on everyone’s mind during the sunny afternoon. “You kind of keep your eyes on the cars going by,” said Krauss, overseeing sales from her lawn chair.

Dwayne Overturf, 59, a resident of Bellflower, spent the afternoon fishing from the Seal Beach pier. As country-Western music played from his portable radio, Overturf said the riot has been “stressful,” but he wasn’t about to let it upset his weekend fishing routine. His only concession was to leave a little later than the usual 5 a.m. “I left at daybreak,” he explained. “I just didn’t want to be in the dark.”

At hilly Porter Ridge Park, in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, people played Frisbee with dogs on Saturday while giggling children frolicked in a sandbox and on the swings. Looting had taken place Thursday just a few miles away in Van Nuys. But here, there was a respite and no sign of damage.

Kurt Knudson, a construction worker from Northridge, said he had brought his 1 1/2-year-old son, Alex, to the park to get him away from the violence on his television set. “There is no noise here. There is no one getting shot up here,” he said. “It’s peaceful up here, nobody seems affected.”

For Kevin Floyd, a Norwalk resident, the riots meant he couldn’t finish researching his thesis because Cal State Long Beach, where he is a graduate student in physics, had shut down. Otherwise, life was fairly routine.

It didn’t surprise him that his neighborhood could be peaceful when so much of the Los Angeles area was torn by strife.

“Los Angeles is so many different races and special interest groups. They are so unconscious about what other people are doing. It’s the nature of the beast,” he said.