Hits and Near Misses : Long Beach: Workers cheer word that the naval shipyard will be spared the budget ax, but too many close calls have left them wary of celebrating just yet.

A throng of workers cheered and clapped outside the Long Beach Naval Shipyard on Friday as Gov. Pete Wilson gave them the official news: They were among the lucky, spared at the last minute from the Pentagon budget ax.

For many, the euphoria was tempered. Threatened with closure for years, the shipyard was off the hit list for now. But would it stay off?

“It’s that up and down thing,” said Gerald Davis, 41, a deputy labor relations officer at the shipyard. “We’re not in the clear. . . . I still have the jitters.”

The scenario is familiar to the 4,200 civilian workers at the shipyard on Terminal Island.

First come the rumors that the yard will be closed. Union leaders lobby furiously to keep it open. Local officials fly to Washington bearing evidence of the shipyard’s efficiency and strategic location. The yard gets slated for closure anyway. Then, at the last minute, comes the reprieve.

It all makes for a nervous existence. Davis spends nearly five hours a day commuting the 69 miles each way between Long Beach and his home in Moreno Valley. He would love to buy a bigger place closer in, but he doesn’t dare.

“You tend not to want to spend,” Davis said. He added: “The shipyard is the only job I’ve ever had. If this closed, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Patricia Ray, 42, a welder from Lakewood, said: “We can relax for a little minute or two. We have to keep very vigilant.”

Politicians and union officials also spoke cautiously.

“This is a day to celebrate, but we’ve got to keep the guard up,” Wilson told a press conference attended by several hundred employees.

He told the workers their jobs had been saved because they perform them so well. “It’s because you’re a lean, tough, very hard-working group.”

The shipyard has acquired a reputation for completing jobs economically, paring its work force from 7,600 in recent years. The city’s fourth-largest employer, it pays about $120 million a year to more than 900 subcontractors, generating 7,500 secondary jobs and $350 million in secondary spending, the city says.

That money is important to Long Beach, which has been buffeted by economic hardship and previous Pentagon cuts. The naval station and naval hospital are to close in a few years, and Long Beach has lost 20,000 jobs to layoffs at aircraft plants.

“We have an 11.2% unemployment rate,” said Jerry Miller, the city’s Economic Development Bureau manager. “We have a lot of vacancies in our apartments. Our retail sales are down. We’re getting killed.”

If the shipyard were closed, the results would be ruinous, officials said. “We’re talking about devastation,” Miller said.

The news that the closure had been averted brought relief to business people.

Gas station owner Ken Stickel heard the news on the radio as he drove to work at 5:30 a.m.

“I was extremely happy. I couldn’t believe it,” said Stickel, who runs a Chevron station on Ocean Boulevard not far from the bridge to Terminal Island. He had thought for sure that the naval yard would be closed this time.

“It’s like a yo-yo,” Stickel said. He estimated that about a fifth of his business comes from shipyard workers and people who work at businesses dependent on it.

On the industrial west side of Long Beach, where tractor-trailers rumble through the streets night and day, Italian deli owner John Passanisi was similarly pleased.

“We were concerned about them leaving the area,” said Passanisi, whose family has run a food business at the same address on Santa Fe Avenue since 1947. “Probably 25% of our business comes from the shipyard. They come in for sandwiches and pizzas.”

The recession has wiped out 40% of his wholesale business, forcing Passanisi to make many of his employees part-time. All around him, businesses have closed and laid off workers.

“The machine shop behind me used to have 20 people working for it,” he said. “Now it’s got one, plus the owner.”

Ken Kressner has watched one plant after another shut down. If the shipyard followed, he said, “Long Beach would turn into an also-ran.”

Kressner would have a few problems, too: “If they don’t work, I don’t work.”

Kressner runs a catering truck that sells burgers and chips to shipyard workers every day at lunchtime.

Diane Pinckard, one of his customers and a six-year veteran of the yard, tries not to worry about the future.

“They’re always threatening to close it,” said Pinckard, who lives in Long Beach. “I try to let it go in one ear and out the other and flow with what comes along.”

Michael Gallegos, a boilermaker from Anaheim, was holding off on the celebratory champagne.

“I don’t believe it until I see it,” Gallegos declared of the salvation Wilson had announced. Then he made a joke about President Clinton: “Don’t ask Bill. Ask Hillary.”