Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Raiders Invited to Oakland : Football: Team says it hasn’t talked of moving from damaged Coliseum. Alameda County denies it is trying to recapture the franchise.

Oakland authorities Wednesday extended a written invitation to the Los Angeles Raiders to play next fall in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum if the earthquake-damaged Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum cannot be repaired in time for the season.

Alameda County Supervisor Don Perata said the invitation was not part of an attempt to bring the Raiders back to Oakland on a permanent basis, but was an offer of assistance during a time of crisis.

“I don’t want to appear to be doing anything other than offering assistance the same way people offered us assistance after the ’89 earthquake,” Perata said. “We’re not trying to profit from someone else’s misery.”

Perata’s remarks, however, drew a caustic retort from the new president of the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

“He says he’s doing us a favor,” said Burke. “Some favor! “

Burke said she would call Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris to get a further explanation of what Oakland was doing. Several years ago, Oakland made a determined but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win back the Raiders, who had moved to Los Angeles in 1982.

A spokeswoman for the Raiders, meanwhile, issued a “categorical denial” of reports broadcast on some stations Wednesday that the team is talking to Oakland about a possible move there for the next season, or, as one report said, has already reached an agreement in principle to do so.

The team spokeswoman, who declined to be identified by name, called all such reports “Alice in Wonderland” and “a cockamamie story.”

Earlier this week, Raider Executive Assistant Al LoCasale said that the team was waiting for reports from structural engineers on the Coliseum damage. In the meantime, he said, the Raiders had not put out feelers to anyone--not to Oakland or Dodger Stadium or the Rose Bowl, which are possible local playing alternatives to the Coliseum next fall.

Earlier Wednesday, the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission unanimously approved a motion giving the team six more months before it would have to commit itself to playing in the stadium next fall.

Since the collapse in 1992 of a major plan to renovate the Coliseum, putting in a second deck and luxury boxes, the team’s lease to play in the stadium has been on a year-to-year basis, Coliseum officials said.

Under this arrangement, the team is normally given only 30 days after playing its last game of one season to commit itself to the next, a timetable that would have given the Raiders only one more week to make such a commitment for 1994, perhaps even before the structural engineer’s report on quake damage would be received.

Instead, the Coliseum Commission action gives both the commission and the team time to see what the total damage is, whether federal grants and other funds can be obtained to repair it, and just how long the repairs will take.

USC, whose football team also plays in the Coliseum, has also said it is awaiting results of inspections of quake damage before exploring alternatives.

Burke on Wednesday said the damage is so extensive that the work ought to be called a “reconstruction” of the 71-year-old stadium rather than a “repair.” But she and others said they were not giving up on the hope of finishing the job by the start of the football season.

With Burke leading the way, the commission quickly voted to retain consultants who are expert in obtaining money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and to set up a special earthquake committee to deal with the manifold problems of reopening the facility.

The commission’s project director for recent Coliseum renovations, Don C. Webb, reported that substantial demolition on at least upper levels would be needed before the quake damage could be corrected, and he said it is possible that the alluvial fill on which the stadium is built would need to be reworked. Webb said the work would cost at least $33 million.

The commission also voted to authorize another $330,000 in earthquake repairs to the Sports Arena, on top of $112,000 in emergency repairs made before the facility was reopened Saturday. And it directed that federal financing be sought to make another $800,000 to $900,000 in repairs to the arena, home of the Clippers and USC basketball teams, that eventually will be necessary.

As the commission met Wednesday, a controversy raged over whether a 1991 report by its principal structural engineer, which said the Coliseum walls did not meet current seismic safety codes and would be seriously damaged in a magnitude 7.0 quake, should have been turned over to the commission by the Spectacor Management Group, the company that manages the Coliseum and Sports Arena.

The report was finally delivered to commissioners at the end of the meeting Wednesday, and when she read it Burke said she felt that it should have been delivered in 1991, at least to key commissioners charged with supervising Coliseum renovation.

“It would be a normal thing to turn it over to them,” Burke said. “I can’t imagine why it wasn’t turned over. It is strange. Spectacor had nothing to gain or lose by not passing it on.”

Two Spectacor officials, the present Coliseum general manager, Jay Hagerman, and the prior manager, Peter Luucko, who was performing the duty in 1991, both explained Wednesday that the report by engineer Nabib Youssef was generally prepared in the context of work that was to be done on the projected massive renovation that never took place.

Besides, they said, it had been directed to the Coliseum’s architects, HNTB in Kansas City, and only a copy was given to Spectacor.

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The executive summary of the report stated that the structural system of the existing Coliseum included “ordinary” concrete when both the Uniform Building Code and the Los Angeles City Building Code “prohibit the use of ordinary concrete frames in regions of high seismicity.” The stadium, however, was built before those standards were in effect.

Youssef’s report went on to say that during a “maximum credible level earthquake,” a magnitude 8.3 on the San Andreas Fault, or a 7.0 on the nearby Newport-Inglewood Fault, there would be “damage to longitudinal beams . . . considerable damage to transverse beams . . . and localized damage at base and top of columns.”

All of these kinds of damage occurred at the Coliseum on Jan. 17, when a smaller quake, the magnitude 6.6 Northridge temblor, struck an area farther from the stadium than the Newport-Inglewood Fault.

Paddock reported from San Francisco and Reich from Los Angeles.