All Bets Are Off at 7 Sites : Horse racing: Off-track wagering on closing-day Del Mar races at Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and five other locations prevented by telephone line breakdown.

A massive breakdown of telephone lines in Orange County early Wednesday prevented betting on the closing-day races at Del Mar at seven of the 18 off-track wagering sites, resulting in a loss of millions of dollars in handle.

The biggest locations to be affected were Santa Anita and Hollywood Park.

Joe Harper, the general manager of Del Mar, said that Santa Anita hoped to draw about 8,000 horseplayers with the help of a promotion. Harper estimated that $3 million might have been bet on the nine Del Mar races at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park alone.

Wednesday’s total handle was $5.9 million, compared to $9.1 million on Del Mar’s closing day last year. The on-track handle on both days was about the same, $3 million in 1992 and $2.9 million Wednesday.

By re-routing lines with the help of Pacific Bell, 11 facilities were able to take bets, the largest being at Fairplex Park in Pomona and Los Alamitos. Several sites conducted business as usual by re-routing lines through the Bay Meadows track in San Mateo.

According to Al Karwacki, general manager of Southern California Off Track Wagering Inc. (SCOTWINC), Pacific Bell reported a major switching failure at its Cypress office before 8 a.m. Wednesday. Karwacki said that the phone company’s backup capabilities at Cypress were also crippled, as was backup equipment at an Alhambra station.

“Pac Bell told me that they’ve never had all three of those units fail at the same time,” Karwacki said. “This is the first time since we started in 1988 that there’s been a mass failure like this. We’ve had individual sites go down occasionally, but never anything like this.”

Of the off-track betting dollar, most is returned to the bettors in payoffs, with the track running the races getting either 2.92% or 4.545%, depending on the type of bet. Each off-track site receives a flat 2%, with the State of California receiving 2.5% or 4%, depending on the type of bet. Horsemen receive either 2.92% or 4.545% of each bet for their purse fund.

Karwacki said that SCOTWINC and its partners don’t carry business-interruption insurance. When SCOTWINC considered insurance a few years ago, brokers told the combine that it would be difficult to write coverage for a business that would be looking for a policy that covers only a few hours of operation.

Harper said at Del Mar that several of the affected betting facilities let their mutuel clerks leave about 4 p.m., after the fourth race was run. There was a report that Pac Bell had restored the lines for betting shortly after that, but later Del Mar was told by the phone company that there was no hope in bringing back service until 6 p.m.--just about the time of Del Mar’s last race. On-track betting and betting at out-of-state locations were not affected.

At Santa Anita, fans were not charged admission and given free programs. The track also handed out cautionary leaflets as the fans arrived at the premises. There were still several thousand people at Santa Anita, hoping that betting would start, as Del Mar was running its third race.

Fairplex Park, which is not far from Santa Anita, was one of the sites that was able to conduct betting because it had a backup system that was compatible with the off-track hub at Los Alamitos.

“We called Santa Anita at 1:30 (half an hour before Del Mar’s first race) to tell them that our system was up, so they could have sent fans over here,” said Ralph Hinds, president of the Los Angeles County Fair at Fairplex Park. “But I guess they decided to hang in there until the bitter end.”

Santa Anita intermittently informed fans through its public address system that it would not be able to take wagers because of the telephone line problem, but didn’t announce that nearby satellite wagering facilities at Fairplex Park and Los Alamitos were in operation for betting.

“We didn’t announce about Los Alamitos because the phone lines were down and we weren’t aware they were in operation,” Santa Anita President Cliff Goodrich said. “We didn’t announce that Fairplex was open because we were told that they had only 13 windows available and we felt that if fans went there, they wouldn’t be able to get their bets down.”

Fairplex Park’s business Wednesday appeared to be normal. On Monday, the Pomona track handled $153,000 with an attendance of 771. Wednesday, the attendance was 1,025 and the handle $236,000.

The switching failure had made it difficult for tracks and other betting sites to communicate with each other. When Harper first learned of the problem early Wednesday, he said that he couldn’t reach Karwacki right away. Frustrated by not being able to make calls from his Los Alamitos office, Karwacki went to his car phone in the parking lot.

“Some of the time I could get through, other times I couldn’t,” Karwacki said. “I give the phone company credit for doing all they could to solve the problem. The system’s worked pretty well for five or six years. Today it didn’t, and we had a disaster.”

Times assistant sports editor Jim Rhode and staff writer Bob Mieszerski contributed to this story.