Navy, Airports, Utilities Boost Security : War: Protests continue, donors swamp blood banks and signs of anxiety emerge as the county comes to grips with the gulf conflict.

Ventura County’s Navy installations, airports and utilities beefed up security Thursday while more than 100 demonstrators gathered at parks and street corners, and scores of donors offered more than the county’s blood bank could accept.

Signs of anxiety also cropped up as the county faced the first full day of war in a generation. The Ventura City Fire Department reported a dozen calls for information on fallout shelters.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s Office of Emergency Services received “quite a few” calls about fallout shelters and one call from a woman asking about gas masks, coordinator Wendy Haddock said. Haddock told the woman that federal authorities would make those available if necessary.

In Thousand Oaks, Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim failed in efforts to call relatives in Israel, getting a recording that said: “We are not able to place a call to that country.”

At the Pacific Missile Test Center at Point Mugu, spokesman Bob Hubbert said, “Personnel at the guard gates have been instructed to examine all identification cards with extra care,” and visits from the media have been banned. Hubbert said the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme was taking those precautions and others.

About 125 demonstrators carrying signs and singing peace songs took to the streets in Ventura, Ojai and Thousand Oaks on Thursday evening, urging an end to the war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, about 25 people in Thousand Oaks held a rally in support of President Bush.

Security was being tightened countywide.

“Everybody’s gearing up,” said Marty de los Cobos, district manager of Southern California Gas Co. in Ventura County. “We’re just part of that overall picture.” Southern California Gas provides natural gas to about 190,000 residential and commercial customers in Ventura County.

At Southern California Edison’s offices in Ventura, one manager, who requested anonymity, said, “We have been tightening up security at our power plants and other facilities. . . . We don’t expect anything, but it doesn’t hurt to keep your eyes open just in case.”

Thursday afternoon, he said, managers received a memo calling on employees to show “extra security awareness during these trying times and to immediately report any incidents” that are suspicious.

At the Oxnard Airport, which handles 90,000 arriving and departing passengers annually, Ventura County Department of Airports officials warned that “the public can expect major delays” because of heightened security. However, ticket agents said commuter flights on American Eagle and United Express were running mostly on schedule.

Airport officials, acting under Federal Aviation Administration direction, barred stationary vehicles within 100 feet of the terminal, which included closure of a 58-space employee parking lot. County Airports Administrator Jim O’Neill said Oxnard police are also making regular patrols of the terminal area.

“We would like only those that have business in there--not those who are welcoming their mother-in-law from Bangor, Maine,” O’Neill said. “We would like only the travelers and the employees in there.”

Officials said airlines are more closely scrutinizing travelers and baggage. “No one has any privacy,” said Holline Bucher, a customer service representative for United Express. “We go through everyone’s underwear.”

The Camarillo Airport, a general aviation facility that doesn’t handle commercial passenger flights, has not been affected by security upgrades, O’Neill said.

At the offices of United Blood Services in Ventura, busy workers turned away calls and visits from would-be donors, urging them to return in coming days and weeks.

“They need to make an appointment,” said Community Relations Director Carolyn Chubb. “Blood only lasts 42 days. I can only use 125 to 150 units a day.”

Early Thursday, the agency, which supplies blood to 10 Ventura County hospitals, shipped 200 pints to its parent blood bank in Scottsdale, Ariz. From there, the blood was scheduled for delivery to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. For the foreseeable future, Chubb said, her office will send 27 pints weekly to the Air Force base.

As Chubb bustled across the floor about 1 p.m. Thursday, a donor without an appointment appeared. Ventura resident Thomas Van Fossen, 42, a veteran of two years in Vietnam, had been working the graveyard shift as a towing company dispatcher and listening to the radio. He wore a camouflage jacket and a “Navy Special Warfare Unit SEAL Team” cap.

“Some of these people said, ‘Blood for Oil,’ ” Van Fossen said. “I decided I’d give some.”

Van Fossen was disqualified, however, because of surgery eight years before--surgery, he said, that may have been a result of Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. He shrugged and left. “The thought was there,” he said.

The Ventura County protests were relatively calm. Passing motorists occasionally yelled expletives at the demonstrators. In Thousand Oaks, pro- and anti-military demonstrators shouted at each other, and peace activists were hit with water balloons, but no one was injured.

“We love our country,” said Tim Liebmann, one of 40 peace demonstrators who gathered at Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Moorpark Road. “We love our troops. We want them to come home as passengers, not cargo.”

At a peace rally in Ventura, which attracted about 50 protesters, Vietnam veteran Gary Parker carefully monitored his pocket radio for developments in the Middle East.

“It’s exactly as I predicted,” said Parker, listening to the news that Iraq had attacked Israel. “It’s just going to all erupt. And for what? That’s the problem. I don’t know what we’re fighting for.”

Astrid deGaia, 15, added: “We have enough problems of our own in the U.S. We don’t need to get into other people’s problems.”

In Ojai, about 25 people gathered at Libbey Park as they have for the past 10 nights.

Earlier Thursday, 100 students at Moorpark College attended a lunchtime lecture to learn what they could do to avoid being drafted--if the crisis comes to that.

Joe Maizlish of Los Angeles, who said he was jailed for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, told the students that if they feel they cannot fight, they should consider becoming conscientious objectors.

David Raymond, an 18-year-old student, said he came to the lecture looking for answers.

“It’s scary and I’m confused,” Raymond said. “I object to this war. Hussein was wrong to invade Kuwait, but I don’t feel we have any right to condemn that, because we’ve done the same thing. We’ve violated international law many times ourselves. It’s hypocrisy.”

Among other signs of war Thursday:

* In Thousand Oaks, Israeli immigrant Miriam Hever, 42, broke the news of the bombing of Israel to a grade-school Hebrew class at Temple Adat Elohim. The children, Hever said, listened quietly.

“I wanted to cry,” she said, “but I couldn’t. . . . I can’t even talk. I’m shaking.”

* At the Primary Purpose rehabilitation center in Oxnard, where six alcoholics were spending their first days of potential recovery, coordinator Cathy Mullins snapped the television off three times before noon.

“They’re obsessed. They’re already into fear, anyway,” Mullins said. “I’m not trying to keep them in denial or anything. But I want them to concentrate on the war they can do something about.”

Times staff writers Tina Daunt and Psyche Pascual and correspondents Kirsten Lee Swartz and Jack Searles contributed to this report.

THE SHELTER PLAN The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s Office of Emergency Services keeps a list of dozens of buildings that could serve as fallout shelters, including public properties such as the Ventura County Medical Center and private businesses with basements, such as the McDonald’s restaurant on Telegraph Road in Ventura.

Fire departments and other local agencies keep similar lists.

“Obviously, there’s no chance of Iraq bombing Ventura or Ventura County,” said Ventura City Fire Department spokesman Barry Simmons. “But I just want people to know that, yes, we have a plan in place; yes, we have fallout shelters. I think it helps alleviate fears if people know that there are people planning for this.”

Other large potential shelters in Ventura include Community Memorial Hospital, the city and county government buildings on Poli Street and the Broadway store at the Buenaventura Mall.

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