A Los Angeles Times Special Report : Coping With The Quake : Recovering From Disaster, Preparing for the Future : Damage Disrupts Critical Utility Lifelines

The lifelines of water, electricity and natural gas that keep the sprawling Los Angeles metropolis working suffered serious fractures Monday, most spectacularly shown in a natural gas fire in the San Fernando Valley and a break in a main aqueduct carrying water from Northern California.

Hundreds of thousands of households were still without gas, power or water by Monday evening and authorities said it could take several days for full service to be restored. Residents of the San Fernando Valley and neighborhoods north of Sunset Boulevard and west of Western Avenue were being warned to boil water before drinking.

Officials were unable to estimate the damage in dollars to crucial infrastructure, but expressed relief that the vast networks of pipes and transmission stations were not devastated even more.

Also, several transmission towers bringing power into the San Fernando Valley from a generating facility at Castaic Lake were damaged, said Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Dorothy Jensen.

Much of the Los Angeles area lost electricity in the early morning quake, but about half of the DWP’s 1.4 million customers had power restored by the afternoon, officials said. In areas outside the city of Los Angeles, Southern California Edison had restored power to all but 150,000 homes and businesses by late afternoon--and had hoped to whittle that number down to 50,000 by nightfall.

The DWP had no count of how many households and businesses had lost water service, but the agency warned that wide swaths of the western San Fernando Valley might have low pressure or no water for several days.

“At this point, it’s very difficult to say what the power situation is, so we are asking people to conserve water,” DWP official Jan Merlo said.

There were no reports of major damage at area reservoirs or dams, but a major trunk line out of the Los Angeles reservoir complex in the Sylmar area sprung a leak, causing service problems in Simi Valley, Ventura County and Los Angeles, according to the Southern California Metropolitan Water District.

The major gas problems involved breaks in four high-pressure transmission pipelines in the San Fernando Valley, including one that erupted into flames on Balboa Boulevard in Northridge, destroying two nearby structures. Those four breaks were later controlled, said Rich Nemec, a spokesman for Southern California Gas Co.

Telephone service appeared to suffer minor disruptions. Pacific Bell said that none of its customers--not even those in Northridge--lost service. General Telephone’s Southern California headquarters in Thousand Oaks could not be reached, but GTE operators and Pacific Bell said they were unaware of massive outages.

Pacific Bell limited incoming calls for four area codes--213, 310, 818 and 805--by 75% to avoid overloading the system.

A Guide to Gas Leaks Natural gas leaks can be stopped by residents who know where and how to turn off the gas where it enters the home. Find your gas meter, usually, located at the side of a home. Locate shut-off valve on the pipe leading to the meter. Use an adjustable wrench to turn off the valve. The longer the wrench, the easier it is to turn the valve. The gas company advises residents to keep a wrench wired to the meter for quick use. The valve is turned off when the bolt runs crossways to the pipe.