Irritation, Then Resigned Acceptance

They raged, they shrugged, they got over it.

When their turn for the rolling blackouts finally came Monday, Southern Californians from Laguna Niguel to Valencia managed to muddle through. Power outages disrupted, at least for an hour, the lives of anyone from office workers to schoolchildren, forcing thousands of people to deal with the equivalent of darkness in broad daylight.

Drivers lost their usual pecking order at intersections in Garden Grove and Mission Viejo as traffic signals blinked off. Diners in Laguna Hills were relegated to cold buffets as restaurant kitchens powered down. Teachers in Lake Forest had to open classroom doors to let in extra light.

Bill Lucero was deep into a project for Verizon Wireless when his computer screen zapped to black at the Campbell Mithun advertising agency in Irvine.

“I didn’t save,” he lamented.

Elsewhere, clerks had to trust customers whose checks they could not check, or were limited to cash-only deals--not exactly reverting to the Stone Age, but hardly what one expects at the dawn of the 21st century.

“We had blow dryers going,” complained Beth Busbee, assistant manager at Carlton Beauty Salon in the Santa Monica Place Mall, where shopping was dimmed before 3 p.m.

“We were in mid-color on several clients,” Busbee said. “We had to send one woman out with wet hair. She wasn’t thrilled.”

Fender-benders were reported throughout the region. Orange County sheriff’s investigator Steve Doan stood at Oso Parkway and Cabot Road in Laguna Hills and witnessed several accidents. More crashes occurred on Aliso Creek Road, he said.

“People are not paying attention,” Doan said. “They do not even look at these signals. . . . It’s just mind-boggling, going through intersections at 55 miles an hour without a signal.”

Darkened signals snarled traffic and knocked Orange County buses off schedule in Garden Grove, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. Scores of buses arrived 15 to 20 minutes late along some of the county’s busiest routes, and officials feared that the problem would grow worse in the evening.

The timing of the blackouts made for red faces at the Orange County Business Council, where officials have spent several months wooing two South Korean companies to build manufacturing plants here.

One company makes batteries, the other medical devices, said Bill Carney, the council’s vice president for economic development. Just before two executives arrived for a meeting Monday, the power went out.

“It’s kind of embarrassing it happened while they were here,” Carney said, adding that the outage probably won’t kill the deal. “We asked them not to mention this to their principals in Korea.”

About half the 58 businesses in the Irvine Spectrum entertainment complex--including the Cheesecake Factory and the Crazy Horse Steak House--lost power for an hour. In all, 25 stores and restaurants were without electricity, and all but three shut down for the duration, said Jennifer Smith, an Irvine Co. spokeswoman.

When the blackout hit a Fluor Corp. office near the Spectrum, four employees decided to go to the Crazy Horse for lunch.

“No sooner did they sit down, 10 minutes later, our power went out,” said Donna Mulkey, general manager for Crazy Horse.

The restaurant couldn’t serve food but managed to keep four tables of customers supplied with iced tea and other beverages through the hourlong outage, Mulkey said. The sunshine helped: The restaurant has big windows and the light poured in.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” she said. “I just would have liked to have had some kind of warning.”

Institutions fared well. Hospitals barely paused as they switched to emergency generators. Schools by and large continued classes.

Capistrano Unified School District reported two schools hit by blackouts: Tijeras Creek Elementary in Rancho Santa Margarita and George White Elementary in Laguna Niguel. Olivewood Elementary in Lake Forest was the only school affected in the Saddleback Valley Unified district.

Olivewood teachers simply opened doors to let in more sunlight and continued classes.

“We just don’t feel like we have a major problem,” said Bill Manahan, the district’s acting superintendent. “Obviously, we’d have one if it doesn’t come back on. Olivewood has responded with grace and calm. Even the pizza looked good at lunch. They had pizza day on time, just like we have had with the power on there.”

He said Olivewood students couldn’t use their computers, “but education was paper and pencil and listening skills and everything that can go on without power.”

Elevators, though, cannot. The usually unheralded workers at Amtech Elevator Co. became heroes. Dan Jenkins, 43, said he freed 15 people in several buildings in Irvine while a score of his fellow workers were “running around” doing the same elsewhere.

The blackout barely disturbed the members of the Orange County chapter of Daughters of the Confederacy, who went on with their lunch with a measure of Southern grace at the Split Rock Tavern in Laguna Hills.

“We’re all very grateful we weren’t in an elevator,” said chapter president Rhobie Ree-Curtis.

Owner Alan Zemek could only offer service with a shrug. “When the electricity goes out, the gas automatically shuts off,” he said. “We had to tell people the soup is still hot and the salad is cold, but that’s about all you’re going to get.”

Staff writers Stanley Allison, Tina Borgatta, Leslie Earnest, Jeff Gottlieb, Bonnie Harris, Jerry Hicks, Dennis McLellan, Jennifer Mena, Bob Pool, Jason Song, Darryl Strickland, Mai Tran and Nancy Wride contributed to this report.