Earthquake: Diaster Before Dawn : County Goes to Aid of Devastated Neighbor : Aftermath: Fire crews, doctors and others head north to join in the relief effort after little damage is found locally. No major injuries are reported in the area.

After determining that Orange County had escaped almost unscathed, county officials mobilized to rush help to disaster-stricken Los Angeles, sending firefighters, doctors, nurses and other rescue workers to join the relief effort in areas hardest hit by Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake.

Once the ground had stopped shaking and the windows had quit rattling, Orange County officials took stock of their situation and found that the county suffered remarkably little damage and no major injuries as a result of the quake.

The most visible sign of damage caused by the 6.6 magnitude temblor was the toppled “Big A” scoreboard atop Anaheim Stadium, a massive 17.5-ton landmark that crushed between 800 and 1,000 stadium seats when it collapsed.

With little to clean up here, Orange County went to work elsewhere:

* Sixty fire engines manned by 192 local firefighters, as well as 56 members of the Orange County Urban Search and Rescue squad, were quickly dispatched to Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley to assist in firefighting and search-and-rescue operations. Among the units mobilized was the county’s Heavy Rescue Team, the unit that pulled 57-year-old Buck Helm from the collapsed Nimitz Freeway following the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake.

* A team of 10 doctors and nurses from UCI Medical Center boarded vans to help staff the emergency room at Granada Hills Community Hospital, near the earthquake’s epicenter.

* Helicopters from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station airlifted a handful of infants from the heavily damaged Northridge Hospital Medical Center so they could be placed in intensive care units at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills and UCI Medical Center in Orange.

* The National Guard activated its emergency operations center in Los Alamitos on Monday morning in preparation for any deployment to Los Angeles and Ventura counties. About 60 National Guard troops reported to the base with their gear, “just in case we need them to perform a mission,” Lt. Col. Pat Antosh said.

* County building inspectors and public works crews were positioned to help Los Angeles County assess and clean up the damage caused by the quake.

In a time of crisis, Orange County had responded quickly.

But as Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez boasted of Orange County’s efficiency at a 10 a.m. news conference, he and other officials conceded that they did not know how many of the county’s fire stations could withstand a major earthquake, or whether medical assistance could be provided in hard-to-reach areas of the county.

A 1989 study warned that more than one-third of Orange County’s 42 fire stations could collapse on their fire crews and equipment in a major earthquake, unless they were retrofitted or replaced, and county officials were unable to say how much of the needed work had been done.

Also, while more than 100 doctors have received special earthquake training, very few have been equipped with the necessary emergency equipment that is supposed to be stored in their automobiles at all times, Vasquez said.

“It causes all of us, as individuals and as policy makers . . . to reflect on what we have done and what we need to do,” Vasquez said. “Clearly, there are things we need to do.”

Orange County, many agreed Monday, had been lucky.

“One guy fell out of bed, and that’s about it,” reported Joe Samet, 72, the earthquake committee coordinator at Leisure World of Laguna Hills.

The earthquake was felt in Orange County at 4:31 a.m. and seemed to go on and on.

But to the amazement of Orange County residents and law enforcement officials, the quake turned out to be more inconvenience--a rude awakening from quiet slumber--than catastrophe, as felt in northern Los Angeles County.

From the Placentia Police Department’s command center, Lt. Chuck Babcock marveled that his city had escaped with only a broken water pipe in a resident’s garage and a broken window on Chapman Avenue.

“As much as it shook, we were surprised we didn’t have more damage,” Babcock said.

In the northern part of the county, there were scattered reports of broken windows in commercial buildings in La Habra and La Palma, but no looting. A Lucky’s market in Westminster also lost a window, police there said.

Later Monday morning, the Huntington Beach Fire Department received more than 90 telephone calls in one hour complaining of a gaslike odor in the area from Huntington Harbour to Newport Beach. A spokeswoman for the department said refineries in the Long Beach-Wilmington area had released some natural gas that was backed up as a result of the earthquake.

Given the county’s minimal damage, officials said they would not know until today whether Orange County would ask to be declared a disaster area, which could make county residents and businesses eligible for federal emergency relief funds.

The county’s freeways and bridges appeared to have withstood the stress, although a bridge on the Santa Margarita Parkway developed a crack about two inches wide and five inches deep. The damage was discovered on a 4-year-old bridge where the parkway crosses Trabuco Creek.

John Sibley, assistant director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency, said the engineering design of the road accomplished its mission: “To absorb the damage and not to fall down. A motorist traveling across it would not notice the damage.”

None of the water districts in Orange County issued any of the warnings that were given to residents of northern Los Angeles County to boil their tap water as a precaution against possible contamination. There were reports that Los Angeles County residents were flocking to purchase bottled water in Orange County.

“We’re just trying to keep water on the shelves,” said a breathless Dave, who had neither time nor inclination to provide his last name but had taken charge of the Los Alamitos Vons in the early evening. “It’s empty right now. And I just filled it a little while ago. All I can say is business picked up. That’s about it. I’ve got to run.”

At Pavilion’s in Seal Beach, clerks had stopped scurrying back and forth to the storeroom by about 6 p.m. Their water stash had run dry, and access to the company’s warehouse was blocked by broken freeways. All told, some 2,000 gallons of water left the store, according to clerk Dustin Dessero.

“We sold out of a week’s worth of water today. Our week’s worth is kept in the back and we’ve blown through all that,” a startled Dessero said. “We’ve been busy all day. A lot of people are here, I’ll say that.”

While the county itself escaped major destruction, the 250 Orange County firefighters and rescue squad members saw a different picture as they undertook the task of searching for survivors amid the rubble in Los Angeles.

As they drove northward Monday morning, the convoy of Orange County fire engines passed demolished strip centers and retaining walls pulled away from their foundations. People sat on their front lawns and curbs, amazed by the damaged structures.

And outside the Northridge Meadow Apartments, where at least seven people were killed, crowds paraded up and down the sidewalks to get a view of the damage.

“Some of these people actually look unfazed by all of this,” Orange County firefighter Craig Casey said. “It’s amazing.”

Locally, the earthquake sent a few residents to hospitals for treatment of cuts and bruises.

And some of Orange County’s hospital beds were needed by five Los Angeles County infants who were transferred from Northridge Hospital’s intensive care unit to UCI Medical Center and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center due to the earthquake.

But perhaps the most significant emergency at Anaheim General Hospital was not earthquake-related, but the birth of a “6.6” baby girl, weighing six pounds, six ounces. She was born 14 minutes after the temblor, a hospital spokeswoman said, “pretty close to the earthquake. I guess they just shook her out at the right time.”

Some took the quake in stride.

At the Westminster Cafe, most of the early-morning regulars sat glued to the 5:30 a.m. television reports of the earthquake.

“I like ‘em,” 58-year-old Huntington Beach carpenter Bruce Boesing said of the earthquakes that periodically rattle Southern California.

“Oh, c’mon,” retorted one of his regular coffee partners, Forrest McCracken, 57, of Westminster.

“I’m serious,” Boesing insisted. “It makes half the people that moved here (to California) get out and go home.”

One woman at John Wayne Airport was so anxious to get out of California that she booked a flight to Salt Lake City on her way home to Tucson. “I don’t want to wait around here for the Big One,” said Maryann Silver, 45. “Our main goal is to get out of here. The whole thing has been such a shock. I’ve been on pins and needles since 4:30 a.m.”

Some county residents were left jittery by the quake and set out to be prepared for the next one.

Bruce Bender, 71, of Newport Beach walked out of a Fountain Valley store with cartons of flashlights and canned food. While he is usually well-prepared for an earthquake, Bender said home renovations made him misplace his cache.

“We have a barrel of earthquake stuff and we can’t find it,” he said. “How do you like that?”

Preparedness did not save a 12-member overnight restocking crew at the Stater Bros. store in Costa Mesa from having to clean up a mess of ketchup, barbecue sauce and other liquids that splattered on the floor during the temblor. The store’s policy of setting glass products two inches from the shelf’s edge did little to prevent countless breaks.

Robert Lira Jr., one of the workers, said practical jokers had rattled a shelf he was stocking just last month. When the earthquake began, Lira said he thought that it was another joke. “Then I saw jars of jelly smashing on the floor and I knew it was the real thing.”

In Laguna Beach, where recent fires and floods damaged the town’s once-pristine hillsides, the earthquake seemed to have done little damage. Straw bales and sand bags--reminders of past disasters--still clung to hillsides.

“Who can tell the difference anyway?” asked John Calhoun, a surveyor who was working in one of the fire-swept areas.

The earthquake’s impact was most apparent at Anaheim Stadium, where debris from the giant scoreboard and advertising panels was strewn across the seats.

Scattered power outages were reported in several communities, including Santa Ana, where 1,000 day shift employees of the ITT Cannon plant started their work day in the parking lot, waiting half an hour for power to resume.

The Anaheim Police Department was expected to have a work slowdown today--not because of but in spite of the earthquake.

Police union officials said the quake would probably not impact the “Blue Flu” sickout planned by about 175 police officers who were expected to call in sick to protest a stalemate in their labor contract negotiations with the city.