EARTHQUAKE / THE LONG ROAD BACK : Stores Hit by Flood of Water-Seekers

They were 40 miles from their usual grocery store, but Dennis and Cathy Vandervort weren’t taking any chances. They needed water, and as they returned Tuesday to their quake-damaged Sherman Oaks home after spending the night with a friend in Santa Ana, they figured they’d better get it wherever they could.

“We decided we’d better stop here on the way back,” Cathy Vandervort said as she loaded three one-gallon jugs of Sparkletts water into her shopping cart at a Seal Beach grocery.

Water--a precious commodity for an area hit by years of drought--has come into even higher demand since Monday’s 6.6-magnitude quake left the Southland in turmoil. The biggest rush came in the hours following the quake, store managers say, but even on Tuesday, demand appeared to continue in some areas.

At one Lucky supermarket here, half an aisle of empty shelves remained where bottles of Arrowhead, Nayas, Sparkletts and store-brand water had stood just 24 hours before. Similar scenes played out across Orange County as residents have been lining up at grocery store cash registers and water vending machines in case another quake finds them in short supply.

A Vons spokeswoman said the grocery giant might even have to start looking for out-of-state water sources just to keep up with the demand.

“It’s very challenging to keep the supplies up. . . . Our manufacturing operations have been up and running continuously,” spokeswoman Julie Reynolds said. “We expect the demand for water to remain very strong.”

Predictably, flashlights and batteries have also been hot items as residents remain worried about getting caught in the dark after another power loss.

At Big A Drugs, a Long Beach store that sits just across the county line from Los Alamitos, people were buying $10 worth of batteries at a time, said employee Barbara Langley.

Pat Frey, assistant manager at the Lucky store in Seal Beach, said residents were in a “panic-buying” mode after the earthquake. The rush, however, had died down there by Tuesday.

“It was definitely busier (Monday)--everybody had water,” he said.

At the Vons in Los Alamitos, the store’s six rows of bottled water were half empty. The giant jugs holding several gallons were also noticeably absent.

“I don’t want to be drinking that (tap) water,” said Sandra Sylvia, who lives in a senior home near the store. “It’s too close to L.A. County.”

Clutching a jug of Arrowhead water, she added that she needed to get new batteries for her flashlight as well.

At Acords Market in Laguna Beach, eight shelves of bottled water had to be restocked Tuesday, as customers lugged home bags of bottled water.