Fear That L.A. Would Be Next Grips Residents

Fear swept through Los Angeles, closing buildings, emptying downtown streets and sending people rushing for emergency provisions and shelter 3,000 miles from the carnage of New York and Washington.

Many thousands, like Justin Sykes, abandoned work for the chance to hunker down at home--or wherever they could manage to feel safe.

“We’re just shocked beyond belief that something could go this far,” said Sykes, 21, of Encino. He and his family were buying gas masks, emergency lights and knives at a Tarzana surplus store, preparing, he said, to “go it alone.”

Southern California stores were crowded with customers stocking up on bottled water--in case terrorists poison the water supply--as well as toilet paper, batteries and canned food. In Hollywood, cars jammed the Mayfair Market, where extra check stands were opened. The manager compared the scene to the millennium buying frenzy.

Some refused to be cowed. Crowds of students, laborers and businesspeople waited hours in line to donate at blood banks. People seemed drawn there to share their sorrow and concern. Couples held each other.

“We just felt useless sitting there watching TV,” said Megan Lawrence, 20, of Indiana. She was among a large group of USC students who skipped class to give blood at the Red Cross on 11th Street and South Vermont Avenue, where hundreds lined up.

Others fled, including a woman from South Pasadena who declined to give her name. She and her husband and 8-year-old daughter set off for the desert near Palm Springs.

“I don’t feel like an alarmist, given the gravity of it,” the woman said. “I am just taking a little more precaution than I normally would.”

Los Angeles was seen as such an obvious candidate for possible attack that no public-relations sheen was applied to dispel it. Instead, the city--and the region--went into immediate lock-down within hours of the tragedies in the East.

Airports closed under federal mandate, as well as many courts, government buildings and office towers. San Fernando Valley shopping malls closed in Northridge, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills. The carousel at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa kept whirling, but, eerily, near empty as nearby stores closed.

In downtown Los Angeles, the morning rush hour changed direction. The exodus snarled downtown surface streets. People on foot showed no evidence of panic and the scene in some places--notably around closed federal offices--was strikingly calm.

Under the surface, however, were private fears betrayed by grim faces and hurried glances skyward. Courthouses, Bunker Hill high-rises, Los Angeles City Hall--all loomed as strange new threats.

“I’m too scared to be here this morning,” conceded Rachel Marin, 31, as she left her job in the City National Bank Building, one of an estimated 200,000 workers who evacuated downtown before noon.

Noises seemed magnified. A woman hurrying down Second Street clutched her chest and glanced to the heavens when a worker slammed a truck door.

One by one, shops on normally bustling Broadway gave up and rolled down their corrugated metal facades. Oscar Naranjo, owner of International House of Music, told employees to go home shortly after getting a call from his wife, concerned for his safety.

One man who held to his post was federal Judge Harry Pregerson, presiding over the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pregerson, 78, a decorated World War II veteran and a federal judge for more than 30 years, made it a point to get through the docket.

“The court is in operation,” Pregerson declared. “We are going to carry on the people’s business. We are not going to let terrorists halt the wheels of justice.”

Levels of anxiety were often difficult to gauge. Fear rippled out from the city core in a muddy mix along with anger, shock, confusion and stunned detachment. Reactions of those not directly affected by such a disaster are typically all over the map, said Dr. C. Scott Saunders, associate director of the UCLA trauma-psychiatry service.

Voters turned out for the special election to fill the 4th District seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Though the count was slightly low, all precincts remained open.

“Our democratic principles . . . have been challenged,” said Jennie Redner of Silver Lake, her voice cracking with emotion. “The least I can do is vote.”

Fear hit in hot spots. There was a bomb scare in West Hollywood, where a U-Haul van loaded with packages was discovered in a parking lot near City Hall. Another bomb scare delayed the regular meeting of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. “I’m infuriated,” said Supervisor Judy Mikels. “You don’t do that in my country.”

And yet--how to stop it? “We’re vulnerable. If anyone has that kind of will to destroy, there is nothing we can do,” she said.

Elsewhere, there were spontaneous shows of patriotism. Flags With a Flair, a shop in Long Beach, immediately sold out of its stock of American flags. Three men waved a huge American flag on Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, eliciting honks of approval from passing motorists.

A sign at the nearby Salvation Army Center urged passersby to stop in and “pray with us.” At midmorning, two men sat silently with their heads bowed inside the center’s dimly lit chapel. Churches, synagogues and mosques held prayer services, with 5,000 mourners filling Saddleback Community Church in Orange County.

Robin Johnson, 49, a West Los Angeles homemaker, attended a night service at Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles because “the power of prayer heals, and I came to be part of the healing process. . . . The Bible always says there will be wars and the righteous will have enemies.” Yet she said she would be haunted by the disaster, “probably forever. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this.”

Unknown numbers of people sought out a different type of sanctuary--by arming themselves.

“Some guy came in and didn’t even know what type of gun he had bought a couple of years ago,” said the manager of Turner’s Outdoorsman in Pasadena. “He showed us the gun and asked, ‘What type of ammo for this?’ ”

Many were anguished awaiting news of family, friends and co-workers in Manhattan, where thousands were feared dead. Anne Wallace-McAndrews of Long Beach spent hours trying to reach her brother, Don, who lives less than three miles from the World Trade Center. Phones weren’t working. When she finally received an e-mail, Don was about to walk the four miles to his son’s school to pick him up. The 15-year-old had been aboard a subway near Central Park when the blasts occurred.

“What’s shocking is thinking of all of New York City incommunicado,” she said. “That spooked us.”

Novelist Susan Straight, a resident of Riverside, had been scheduled to fly to San Francisco on Tuesday to promote her new book, but instead sat in her living room in pajamas, watching TV and trying to comfort her three children.

Like so many others, she compared the attacks to Pearl Harbor--only far worse.

“It was an attack on people just sitting in their offices,” she said. “Our kids will just never feel as safe as we felt. We . . . think about Pearl Harbor, but that wasn’t like this. Nothing’s like this.”