L.A. Rioting Takes Toll of Jack in Box Eateries : Damage: One restaurant was burned to ground, 11 were badly damaged and six had minor damage.

Although the rioting in Los Angeles evidently spared most San Diego-based companies, Foodmaker Corp., the parent company of the Jack in the Box fast-food chain, was not so lucky.

Vandals burned one Jack in the Box restaurant to the ground, Paul Schultz, vice president for operations at the chain’s San Diego headquarters, said. Eleven Jack in the Box eateries suffered extensive damage, and six had windows broken and other relatively minor damage.

A team of Jack in the Box architects, construction experts and purchasing people spent Monday surveying restaurants that were damaged or vandalized. The team is gathering information that executives will use to determine which restaurants will be reopened, Schultz said.

Decisions will be based upon the damage assessment team’s report and terms of existing leases. Schultz said it would be “premature” to estimate how many stores will reopen. Buildings affected by the rioting were owned by the company and a franchisee.

No Jack in the Box employees were hurt during the violence, Schultz said. Individual restaurant managers, acting in concert with regional and home-office officers, made quick decisions on when to shut restaurants and send employees home, Schultz said.

The company’s disaster plan makes “personal safety . . . the No. 1 priority of all our people,” Schultz said. “We wanted to ensure that both our guests and employees were taken care of.”

Schultz, who remained in San Diego, said that reports from the riot-torn neighborhood were difficult to comprehend: “I’ve never dealt with anything of this magnitude. We’ve had individual restaurants (damaged), but never anything like this.”

One eatery was burned “virtual ly to the ground . . . it’s a total loss,” Schultz said. Others were “essentially gutted . . . (by looters who took) virtually everything that could be moved . . . food, food supplies, cash register systems and furniture. In some cases, things were stolen, in others it was simply destroyed.”

The rioting seemed to have spared most other San Diego-based companies.

San Diego-based Price Co., which operates the Price Club discount warehouse chain, closed its Inglewood outlet Thursday and Friday, Jacklyn Horton, Price Co. executive vice president, said Monday.

Although business hours at a handful of other stores were shortened because of the city’s dawn-to-dusk curfew, by Saturday morning “it was business as usual at all locations,” Horton said.

San Diego Gas & Electric, which often offers to send crews and trucks to help out-of-town utilities repair damage done by natural disasters, is “standing by, ready if we’re requested to help,” SDG&E; spokesman Fred Vaughn said Monday. “But so far we haven’t been asked to help.”

Anaheim-based Carl Karcher Enterprises reported that one of its company-owned Carl’s Jr.s was burned in downtown Los Angeles and four others vandalized.

But spokeswoman Patty Parks said that all, except the torched restaurant, will be back in operation this week. No decision has been made whether to rebuild the fire-damaged restaurant.

In addition, Parks said that a Carl’s Jr. franchisee reported that one of his restaurants near the Coliseum in Los Angeles was damaged and will remain closed for the immediate future.

Times reporter Chris Woodyard in Orange County contributed to this story.