Recovery & Resources / AN ORANGE COUNTY GUIDE TO COPING WITH FIRE : Repair Crews Hustle; Free Phone Service Starts

While a blackened Laguna Beach smoldered Thursday, utilities crews from around Southern California worked to restore power and phones to residents.

Though most homes were untouched by flames, many still lost phone, electricity or gas service Wednesday afternoon. As a result, utilities crews were almost as prominent in town Thursday as firefighters.

“A number of our facilities were involved. Poles and wires and transformers were burned,” said Steven V. Nelson, area manager for Southern California Edison, which supplies electricity to portions of Laguna Beach. “What we are doing right now is restoring service to customers that was interrupted . . . at one time, 5,000 customers were out of service.”

While electrical crews worked to restore electricity to about 150 remaining homes Thursday, phone crews set up a bank of 16 telephones on Broadway for free local and long-distance calling, courtesy of GTE California and AT&T.;

“It’s for people who are burned out and need to contact friends, loved ones and colleagues,” said Dan Smith, spokesman for GTE.

In addition, Smith said the phone company has implemented a series of free services to aid fire victims.

Telephone customers who lost their homes can have calls to their home phone numbers forwarded to a new, temporary location or into a GTE-operated voice mail system.

In the burned areas GTE lost much of its network of poles and cables to flames, but its all-important switching station in Laguna Beach survived and much of the rest of the city’s phone service remained intact throughout the fire.

The brush fires cut off the gas supply to about 2,000 houses and businesses between El Moro and Laguna Beach, said Mitchell Pratt of the Southern California Gas Co. It will take about four days to completely restore gas service.

“Right now, some areas are still very hot,” he said on Thursday afternoon. “As we work behind the Fire Department . . . we will visit each damaged home and secure or plug pipes.”

And in the burned-out areas, gas to some of the destroyed houses burned furiously from ruptured lines like so many eternal flames. After plugging those leaks on Wednesday and Thursday morning, Pratt said, crews would go door-to-door restoring power.