EARTHQUAKE: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : CSUN Opens Today After Last-Minute Scramble : Education: By nightfall Sunday, some portable classrooms were not set up. Class scheduling errors had surfaced.

Officials at battered Cal State Northridge scrambled Sunday to piece together a last-minute jigsaw puzzle of classroom and parking arrangements for the campus’s reopening this morning, delayed two weeks because of the Jan. 17 earthquake.

By nightfall Sunday, some of the more than 300 portable classrooms scheduled to replace earthquake-damaged buildings had not been set up, and errors surfaced in class scheduling. But officials promised that crews would work through the night, and that space would be found for all classes.

But officials said they will be short only about 1,550 parking spaces--instead of a shortage of several thousand spaces that loomed a few days ago--after several new parking areas were hastily arranged. They also announced plans for a system of shuttle buses.

Students still were being advised to arrive an hour before their scheduled class times and to be prepared for general confusion and changes in class locations. “We have an entirely new city of a campus,” said university spokesman Bruce Erickson. “The old one is locked up, buttoned up.”

Some students who had already moved into on-campus housing--which also was extensively damaged by the earthquake--said they were looking forward to today’s opening of a university in portables.

“It’s going to go down in the history books. It’s totally unique,” said Damon Martin, 22, a senior and resident adviser.

Adding to the opening-day confusion was a mistake in the campus’ post-quake class schedule--which was published and available to students only Sunday--that showed scores of art, theater and music classes meeting in a single portable classroom, Arts Annex 120.

University officials said students taking such classes--the entire School of Arts on-campus curriculum--will be able to obtain correct information at 22 information booths set up throughout the 353-acre campus. Guides also will be on hand at the classroom to redirect students to the correct locations.

In other developments, university officials announced plans to supplement the campus’s regular police force with officers from other Cal State University campuses and a private security firm after a fire of suspicious origin gutted three classroom trailers early Sunday. Officials said they had no suspects and no firm cause for the blaze.

Elliot Mininberg, CSUN’s vice president for administration, said as many as four extra officers will be on duty during the day and as many as 16 extra at night beyond the campus’ regular force of fewer than 20 officers. The request for other Cal State officers went out after the fire, but CSUN had already been arranging for the contract officers.

Throughout Sunday, contractors worked on the modular buildings that will serve as classrooms, offices and bathrooms, since virtually all of the campus’ major classroom buildings remain closed. Two of the bathroom trailers sit directly across from the recreational vehicle that serves as an office for CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson.

Campus officials said high winds in the area were hampering the delivery of some of the modular classrooms, which must be towed in by trucks. But CSUN Provost Louanne Kennedy said two small campus buildings--the communicative disorders facility and arts and design center--will be pressed into service.

Several hundred campus employees and students who will staff information booths attended a briefing Sunday afternoon and then walked the campus to get a feel for its new layout in preparation for today’s expected onslaught. Although about 24,000 students are registered for the semester, up to 15,000 are expected today.

Because the campus’s largest parking structure, containing 2,500 spaces, collapsed in the quake, and much of its normal surface parking is covered with portable classrooms, officials were urging students to consider three new parking locations with about 3,200 spaces that have been arranged in recent days.

The locations are 1,500 spaces on the north campus along Devonshire Street between Lindley and Zelzah avenues; 1,200 spaces at the former Handyman hardware store on Plummer Street west of the Northridge Fashion Center; and 500 spaces at the former Prairie Street Elementary School on Zelzah north of Nordhoff Street.

Campus officials said they will run free shuttles between the campus and the Handyman site, the most distant from campus, every half hour from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Shuttles will run between the north and main campuses every few minutes between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. The former elementary school site is part of the main campus and will have no shuttle service.

Mininberg said those spaces, plus the campus’ remaining regular parking, will total about 7,640 spaces by Monday, compared to the 9,200 spaces available before the earthquake. By the end of the week, Mininberg said the campus will be about even again, when another 1,500 spaces now being graded become available opposite the University Tower Apartments.