REGIONAL REPORT : COLUMN ONE : Fear of the Unknown Is Rattling : Recent earthquakes jolt many frightened Southland residents into preparing for the Big One. Others see an opportunity to make a buck.

When it comes to calamities, Abraham Flores is far more concerned about the Big One than he is about a further outbreak of civil unrest.

“Cops can stop riots,” reasons the Boyle Heights sixth-grader. “But you can’t put an earthquake in jail. You can’t give it the electric chair.”

Shaken by last month’s magnitude 7.5 Landers temblor--and ominous reminders from seismologists that a larger shake is long overdue--Southern Californians are exhibiting lingering symptoms of earthquake Angst.

For some, it is the jitters that arise when a washing machine rattles or a truck rumbling down the street vibrates the windows and light fixtures.

“I’m always prepared to believe it’s an earthquake,” said Jean Chatoff, a computer graphics designer from Santa Monica. “You learn to become very sensitive to your furniture.”

For others, it is a heart-fluttering response to groundless rumors.

Has the National Guard secretly been placed on alert? Are county government employees quietly being advised to evacuate the state? Is the San Andreas Fault tearing open at a rate of five inches an hour?

Emergency preparedness officials in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties report that they have been bombarded by frantic calls posing such alarming queries.

“I’m hearing these rumors from otherwise rational people, some of whom are friends of mine,” said William Bethel, a planner for the San Bernardino County Office of Public Safety. “Somehow, there is a real heightened concern about an impending earthquake and the suspicion government is keeping it a secret.”

The potential for a devastating shaker is one of the handful of concerns that cuts across economic, racial and geographic lines in a region as disparate as Southern California.

Indeed, the Newport-Inglewood Fault, on which scientists say a magnitude 7.0 quake could cause as many as 21,000 deaths, represents one of the few ties between Orange and Los Angeles county communities.

Moreover, the infamous San Andreas Fault, despite running primarily through the desert between the Salton Sea and Ft. Tejon, could turn the ground under large portions of Orange County, West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley into the consistency of gelatin during a magnitude 8.3 temblor, scientists say.

After the Landers quake, the most powerful to strike California in 40 years, some scientists have warned that the Big One could strike along the San Andreas Fault at any time. Other scientists have taken a less alarmist tack, saying there is no way to predict whether the massive temblor will hit tomorrow or in several decades.

For many Southland residents, that air of uncertainty--arguably unlike any potential disaster other than the now-receding threat of nuclear warfare--is difficult to handle.

UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Gary Small says the thousands of frenetic calls that government officials are receiving from quaking citizens comprise essential elements of a classic panic reaction.

“Mass panic is an outbreak of anxiety or fear in a group of people,” said Small, who has studied mass hysteria. “The symptom spreads from person to person due to a situation that’s anxiety-provoking, such as being in the actual earthquake, or less directly, by telephone after observing media reports or reading about it in the newspaper.”

However, Small and other trauma experts emphasize that quake consciousness, when not stretched to the point of panic, is a healthy phenomenon.

“People don’t need to walk around borrowing trouble, but it’s foolhardy not to be prepared,” said Dr. Calvin Frederick, chief of psychology services at the VA Medical Center in Westwood. “Everybody in a household should be assigned a task--Junior in charge of flashlights, Suzie in charge of water bottles and so on.

“And talking about earthquakes, so they won’t come as a complete shock and surprise, certainly can help.”

In Riverside County, Emergency Services Division chief Greg Scott reports that dozens of businesses have inquired about updating their preparedness plans.

“It just seemed like a good time,” said Brook McKnight, senior vice president of the Inland Empire National Bank, who invited Scott to speak last week to management employees. “We had not done as much as we should have, which is probably the same with most businesses around.”

Salesmen are finding that where there is the potential for disaster, there is the potential to make money. Firms that market emergency preparedness kits report brisk sales.

“People are taking a pragmatic approach,” said Howard Wallace, president of Survivor Industries in Newbury Park. “Whatever the reason, they realize more and more, and rightfully so, that the first line of defense is themselves.”

Last week, in the City of Industry showroom of the Simpler Life Emergency Provisions Co., customer Richard Castillo pored over rock-hard blocks of survival food.

“I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t at the front of my mind,” said the 30-year-old Montebello resident. “I’m looking for food and things I can put in the back of my car and forget about for a year or two.”

Castillo, a forklift operator at a Disneyland warehouse in Anaheim, said earthquakes are different from other natural and man-made disasters.

“Plane crashes you can’t predict,” he said. “Rioting we should be able to prevent through law enforcement or through social change. Earthquakes you can’t do anything about (but) prepare.”

After picking through freeze-dried nutrients, sterile gauze and utility shut-off wrenches for 20 minutes, Castillo bought a three-day supply of S.O.S. survival food bars ($6.25 each) for his sister and himself. He also purchased several extra bars in case he happens to be entertaining when the Big One strikes.

“If you have a friend with you, you can’t say: ‘No, you can’t have anything,’ ” Castillo said. “And if I’m not with a friend, maybe I could trade the extra food for other supplies.”

On Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, quake safety entrepreneurs took to the streets last week hoping to take advantage of the earthquake anxiety.

Leon B. Miller, 58, and his son Richard, 31, hawked “two-person, three-day” survival kits from a pickup truck parked across from a kosher meat market.

“These kits came across from one of my suppliers,” said the elder Miller, who usually makes a living selling personalized pens. “We’re factory reps so we took this on as a line and it’s been very well-accepted by people.”

Besides his new role as an in-the-road salesman, Miller said he is attempting to peddle the $35 kits--neon yellow boxes crammed with food packets, flashlights, waterproof matches and water pouches--to auto dealers who could use them as promotional gimmicks. “You know,” he said, “you buy a car, you get a survival kit.”

In one 45-minute period under the hot afternoon sun, nearly a dozen passing pedestrians, motorists and bicyclists stopped to check out the disaster display. None made a purchase. But several, including Bill Rogers, 24, said they might return with cash the next day.

“My sister is paranoid and she said get a kit,” said Rogers, a struggling screenwriter. “And my own concern is up. With this much earthquake activity, it would indicate some sort of instability.”

Emergency supplies and kits are also showing up on the shelves of major discount shops and grocery stores these days, including Alpha Beta supermarkets, which will begin marketing the kits in its bottled water sections next week.

Experts say only time will tell whether a new era of authentic quake alertness has dawned on the Southland or if the intense reaction of many residents will be short-lived.

For a large number of Southern Californians, denial remains a constant--even within a few miles of the epicenter of the magnitude 5.9 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake.

Pat Barilla, pausing between frames at the Friendly Hills Bowl in Whittier, said he takes no precautions for quakes and has no intentions of doing so.

“I’m more or less used to them,” said Barilla, 72, a retired school plant manager and New York subway motorman. “It seems a 4 or 5 magnitude now is a passing thing, you take it for granted.

“It’s fate--if it comes, it comes,” said Barilla, a member of the “Unpredictables” bowling team.

But for those who do worry, the anxiety is bound to recede as time passes, experts say.

“It’s human nature,” said psychologist Small. “With time, our levels of anxiety diminish and our earthquake kits will expire.”

Indeed, some experts say that a “quake that cried wolf” phenomenon could develop if a major temblor does not strike Southern California soon.

“It’s one of the dilemmas for emergency service planners,” said trauma expert Daniel S. Weiss, an associate professor at the UC School of Medicine in San Francisco. “On the one hand, they don’t want to be put in the position of, after the fact, not having given adequate warning.

“But on the other hand, it’s fairly well documented that to continue to warn without the occurrence of a severe event ends up making people less responsive to the warning.”

* GETTING READY: A step-by-step outline of how to prepare for the Big One. B2