Panic and Relief Flow From U.S. Through Phone Lines

Over radios and back fences and worktables, the news--like the explosions--came in waves.

Luis Arao heard it in the factory, from his boss, who called in from home, breathless and scared. Daniel Rico heard it in his truck, from a friend whose wife learned about it on TV and phoned her husband:

Guadalajara, the city they had all once called home, was blowing apart.

More than 400,000 people living in the Los Angeles area are from the state of Jalisco, born or bred there--and in the 24 hours after Wednesday’s gas explosions leveled at least 20 square blocks of the colonial city that is Jalisco’s capital, it seemed like every one of them was one on the phone.

One of them was Sal Castillo of Huntington Beach. He and his brother, Carlos, have been trying to contact family members who live in downtown Guadalajara near Wednesday morning’s blasts.

“The lines have been busy, or cut,” Castillo said Thursday evening. “I still haven’t heard from them.”

They last heard from their mother, Josefina, 80, and Carlos Castillo’s wife and two young boys about a month ago. A call to the Mexican consulate in Santa Ana did not help, and trying to call the damaged city results in a constant busy signal.

Sal Castillo has scanned several newspapers and TV for news about the wounded or dead.

“I’m hoping that they will have a list to see,” he said.

Calls from the United States into Guadalajara have been at 10 times their normal rate, AT&T; spokeswoman Holly Echols said. AT&T; blocked 60% to 70% of U.S. calls into the devastated city to allow more calls to come the other way.

“We found that one call coming into the United States is worth about five or six calls that are leaving,” Echols said. “One person tells the news to all the family and friends in the U.S.”

Four thousand calls came in to the Mexican Consulate here in 24 hours--all of them panicky, all asking if this name or that one, a father, a sister were on the list that grew by the hour. So many calls, said consular official Oscar De La Torre, that rank dissolved: Everyone from the consul general to the security guards answered whatever phone happened to be ringing.

But some, like Luis Arao, had to see for themselves.

He took the day off from the Vernon cloth factory where he and so many other Jaliscienses work to come to the Mexican Consulate. Arao, 19, crouched in front of the white wooden signboards posted outside, where the names of the dead and injured--the fallecidos and heridos --were posted, faxed and photocopied on the letterhead of Jalisco’s attorney general.

He scanned the columns. “Nobody,” he said, and straightened up.

“My mother is the one who is so scared. With the earthquake, and this, she thinks the world is coming to an end,” he said with a small smile. “I said, ‘Don’t tell me that; I don’t believe that stuff.’ ”

He applied for travel approval, in case he is needed in Guadalajara.

What is needed, the Mexican Consulate was telling people Thursday, is expertise and money. Mexico’s emergency agencies have taken care of food and shelter for the displaced of Guadalajara.

Mexican telephone officials have set up a special number--3-679-8000--that functions like a phone mailbox. Messages left there by concerned relatives are being forwarded to hospitals and emergency shelters in Guadalajara. The number, according to phone officials, drew 50,000 calls Thursday.

Donations may be channeled through the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, marked “Mexican Gas Explosion,” P.O. Box 11364, Santa Ana, Calif. 92711-1364. Or the public can call (714) 538-8351, Ext. 233.

Times staff writers Stephanie Chavez and Eric Young contributed to this story.