EARTHQUAKE / THE LONG ROAD BACK : That Powerless Feeling : Outages Hopscotch Through Valley: Some Get Volts of Life, Others Scramble

On one block there is power and the comfort it brings: lights, a refrigerator, heat.

Yet two blocks down Index Street, neighbors are still sleeping on their front lawns, and, when there is anything to eat but cold sandwiches, it comes from a gas barbecue.

Here in Granada Hills, in what used to represent the best of suburban living, the invisible umbilical cord linking residents to 110 volts of life-sustaining energy has been broken, replaced by the unaccustomed intimacy that comes from having to share even the most basic necessities.

A 28-foot camper powered by a gas generator becomes the family room for neighborhood youngsters, who gather around the reassuring blue light of a tiny portable television. Water, also cut off to some, is dipped out of one family’s pool and used to flush toilets and wash sticky kitchen floors up and down the block. And, in every 38-year-old stucco ranch house, residents pitch in to clean up during the all-too-brief daylight hours.

“It’s very much a community effort here,” said Dave Campbell, 39, a lawyer with the district attorney’s office who has lived on the block for four years. “The first thing we did after the quake was borrow a flashlight from our neighbors to find our glasses. Without their help, we would have been blind.”

“I have nothing in my fridge, but everyone is feeding us,” added Jeanne Fritzel, a retired teacher who has lived in the housing tract since it was built in 1956.

Although power had been restored Wednesday to most of the 1.3 million customers served by the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, a spokeswoman said that about 45,000 customers remained cut off, including those neighbors on Index Street. The outages may last throughout the week because of downed power lines and damaged transformers, DWP spokeswoman Jan Merlo said.

Furthermore, Merlo warned that there may be sporadic outages throughout the region in coming months as workers try to permanently repair equipment that they could only jury-rig in the aftermath of the Northridge quake. “Expect interruptions,” Merlo said.

Wednesday, the outages hopscotched from block to block in San Fernando Valley communities from Granada Hills to Sylmar to Sherman Oaks, skipping some houses and affecting others in a seemingly illogical pattern.

Residents of the 15900 block of Index Street coped with the lack of power by digging out long-unused camping equipment, including lanterns, tents and portable toilets. Gary Boener, 46, retrieved his 28-foot tan-and-white RV out of a North Hollywood storage facility Monday and parked the camper in front of his house.

“It’s kind of become the focal point of the whole neighborhood,” said Jeff Webb, 36, a director for Disney Studios. “We can watch TV in there and not feel so cut off from everything.”

“Before this, our only contact with the outside world was sharing earphones to our Walkman,” agreed Suzanne Campbell, 31, a former nurse who has lived in the neighborhood for four years. “It’s amazing to be so close and not know what’s going on.”

Without electricity, and in many cases without natural gas, many residents had also been unable to bathe for days, a new hardship for many.

“I feel like somebody living under a bridge,” said Sam Farfalla, 65, who had been sponging off with cold water for three days.

Other residents said living without lights lent a sense of urgency to their cleanup efforts.

“You have to get as much done before dark as you can,” said Marilyn Hutton, 30, washing a goopy mixture of spilled orange juice, sugar and oil off her dog’s water bowl Wednesday.

Putting a positive spin on the trying situation, Noel Laspinas said the disaster afforded him a reprieve from working three jobs to support his wife and her parents, who recently emigrated from the Philippines.

“It feels good to be kicking back, even though without electricity I can’t watch my favorite shows,” Laspinas said.

Shortly after noon, an automatic sprinkler system on the north side of the street began spurting, indicating that power had been restored there.

“I feel like I just inherited a million bucks,” said David Ra, 24, a computer technician who lives on that side of the street. “The first thing I’m going to do is shower.”

But the power was still out on the south side, and a DWP lineman working in the area said twisted power lines, which might take another day or so to repair, were responsible.

Neil Berger, 42, an attorney who lives on the north side of the block, promised not to abandon his less-fortunate neighbors. When the quake struck and Berger could not immediately reach his wife, who was working a graveyard shift at a telephone company, his neighbors listened patiently to his concerns, he said.

“Time to dig out the extension cords for them!” he said, just moments after his power came on.