Aid for Riot Victims Pours Into the City : Donations: It comes in single cans of food from individuals and in truckloads of items from corporations. Some worry that the outpouring may not last.

A hundred thousand toothbrushes have landed in the riot zone. Close behind came 20,000 cans of tuna, 1,120 pounds of cilantro, 40,000 cans of pet food, 20,000 pounds of sweet corn, 30,000 Bibles, 20,000 pounds of cookies and crackers--and the services of a dentist.

Donations of food and clothing for riot-shocked residents of South Los Angeles are pouring in from around the country--a can at a time in scores of charitable drop-off points and by the truckload from corporate donors.

Everything from onions, cookies and diapers to flowers for Mother’s Day have flooded scores of Los Angeles relief organizations. Contributions run the gamut from baby food and cereal to truckloads of vegetables.

The items--including books from a third-grade class in Philadelphia--are finding a welcome in the blighted neighborhoods where thousands of jobs were lost when businesses burned in the rioting.

Would-be donors have backed up traffic for more than a week around First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a hub for the relief effort. One woman drove a truckload of food and clothing from her home in the state of Washington.

Last week, the church distributed 8,600 bags of groceries to families whose access to stores was cut off because of fires, said volunteer coordinator Karen Caffee.

Federal officials reported Monday that there are more than 1,000 food distribution sites in Los Angeles County, up from the usual 600.

So much is being shipped to the region that food banks have asked for--and received--donations of additional cold storage and warehouse space, said Doris Bloch, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

However, some officials worry that the abundance--while welcome--may dry up as public concern about the riots fades. The donors represent a Who’s Who of corporate America, including Procter & Gamble, General Foods, Kraft, Kellogg and Keebler. But smaller entities are also involved, including a Chandler, Ariz., elementary school, a Dayton, Ohio, radio station and the Japan Help Line, which sent Japan Airlines flight attendants as volunteer workers.

Donations include dozens of portable toilets for relief workers and 45,000 pounds of toiletries airlifted into Los Angeles from the East Coast by a humanitarian organization. Services also have been contributed by an architectural firm, a dentist and lawyers. Oberlin College of Ohio has offered to pay travel expenses for any student willing to work in the riot-torn neighborhoods of Los Angeles this summer.

One measure of the success of the volunteer programs is the failure of a planned free bus service to take South Los Angeles residents to other neighborhoods to shop. At the Galilee Baptist Church pickup point last week, no one showed up. “There’s so much free food around that people aren’t ready to go out and spend their money,” the Rev. G. Lind Taylor said.

Bloch said the Los Angeles Food Bank usually distributes about 2 million pounds of food a month. She expects that to jump to more than 3 million pounds this month because of the outpouring of concern after the riots.

“It’s amazing how generous people can be,” said Bloch, while gazing over “pallets and pallets of onions” trucked in last week by the Western Growers Assn.

“The companies get a tax write-off,” said Bloch. “But most of them don’t care about that, not when they hear that children are the fastest-growing segment of the poor.”

Among the corporate donations received are four truckloads, or about 160,000 pounds, of cereals from General Mills; two truckloads, or about 80,000 pounds, of mixed food and personal care products from Kellogg; 20,000 pounds of cookies and crackers from Keebler and 20,000 pounds from Nabisco.

The Ralphs, Lucky and Vons supermarket chains have also rolled in truckloads to the food bank’s docks since the riots ended.

Trader Joe’s, the South Pasadena-based bargain gourmet food and liquor retailer, donated 20,000 cans of tuna to the Salvation Army’s riot relief program before all of the fires were out.

“We knew we had this product available, it doesn’t spoil and it is high in protein,” said Pat St. John, spokesman for Trader Joe’s. “So we got in touch with someone who could use it right away.”

Trader Joe’s, like many companies, is giving away products that are fresh and safe, but obsolete because of labeling or other cosmetic reasons.

Trammell Crow Co., a major real estate development and management firm, donated 26,000 square feet of warehouse space in Bell to the Los Angeles food bank to help handle the overflow of donations, said Craig Furniss, marketing director.

KNBC officials sponsored a last-minute food drive two weekends ago and were shocked to find that they had filled 15 five-ton trucks. The next weekend, they filled 16 more.

“It just took off,” said Beatrice Lewis, manager of public service for the television station. Before the first day was out, 75 volunteers were drafted to direct traffic and mark and pack boxes of the foodstuffs, Lewis said.

Other companies--including Northrop Corp., the brokerage firm of Sutro & Co., the California Mart, Farmers Insurance, Southern California Edison and Chief Auto Parts--have also begun food and clothing collection drives.

Just how long this outpouring of concern will last is unclear.

Mary Horton, a volunteer at Faith United Methodist Church in South Los Angeles, said: “I don’t know how long we’re going to do it. Right now, we’re doing it as long as the people are coming, and as long as we have the food.”

Herb Carter, president of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said the charitable response to the riots has been magnificent. But, he said, it is a natural phenomenon for people to soon forget the horrifying images of disasters and that “there is no reason to believe it will be different this time.”

And that, Carter said, is the challenge: to have a sustained effort that will get to the social problems that existed long before verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case were read in Simi Valley. “We went through this 27 years ago,” said Carter. “The conditions are worse today than in 1965. This time we’ve got to do it right.”

Bloch agreed that it is unlikely that the donated food will outlast the need.

Although the emergency need will last at least through the year, she said, “there won’t be a sustained interest.”

The ranks of the poor and unemployed have swelled by the thousands. Some seeking food bank help have been unable to find open stores in their neighborhoods. Others are stocking up because they worry that the riots may hurt the flagging economy.

“I don’t have a problem with people like that getting (free) food,” said Bloch. “No one waits on these lines just because food is free.”