AFTER THE RIOTS: TAKING STOCK OF THE CITY : Archeologists Turn Their Skills on Charred Rubble : Search: Experts sift through burned-out store for remains of a missing girl.

In other circumstances, the forensic anthropologists and archeologists on their hands and knees in the charred rubble at Vermont and Slauson avenues might have been searching for signs of an ancient culture.

A bone here, a clay pot there, would have explained a lot about life in an earlier era.

But on Saturday their task was to find physical evidence of the fate of Angela Powell--bone fragments or teeth--amid the blackened ruins of a burned-out appliance store.

The 22-year-old woman was last reported seen inside the New Guys television and appliance store on the night of April 29, a night of arson and rioting that riveted the nation and left her mother, Elizabeth Blanding, in anguish.

Blanding said her daughter had gone shopping with her boyfriend, whom she identified as William Arnold. Police said Arnold managed to escape the smoke and flames after the store caught fire and waited outside in vain for 1 1/2 hours, hoping that Powell would emerge. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office said witnesses heard screams from inside the blazing building.

Blanding is distressed at the speculation that her daughter and others were looting the store at the time of the fire--police decline to comment about what Powell was doing there. Blanding told police earlier that she believed her daughter had entered the store to warn others of the danger.

“Just pray for me,” a tearful Blanding said Saturday. Days earlier, she stood near the ashes of the store as search dogs and firefighters combed the debris for any evidence of those who may have died in the inferno. They found nothing.

“I just can’t see how they’re going to find anything with all that stuff falling down from the roof,” Blanding said in a telephone interview. “I don’t know how. That was the last place she was seen.”

Indeed, experts said that human remains such as teeth, for example, are often not easily recognizable in the rubble of a fire. Teeth will turn black in a fire. Dental materials may have a coat of black, making it difficult to separate them from burned wood.

Nonetheless, the grim search was resumed Saturday by a team of 20 forensic anthropologists, forensic dentists and archeologists, several of whom assisted in the search for bodies after the 1986 Aeromexico jetliner disaster.

“Oftentimes in situations like this, firemen will go through with their rakes. But firemen are not trained in cremated bone. They could actually go through an area and go right through a body and never even know it,” said forensic anthropologist and team leader Judy Suchey.

Scientists and others hope their efforts will bring “closure” of the tragedy for the family.

“It’s very bad when you don’t know for sure and there’s a (small) chance she wasn’t here,” Suchey said. “They cannot continue the mourning process.”

Authorities also hope the lessons learned in the grim search will help explain why seven search dogs working earlier this week apparently failed to pick up the scent of Powell’s body and perhaps those of others who had been trapped in the store.

“Does it mean that dogs cannot sniff cremated remains? If so, they may not be useful in similar circumstances,” Suchey said.

But the task at hand was finding Powell’s remains, if they were there.

The 20 volunteer experts went about their business with determination and meticulous care. The fire had been so intense that iron reinforcing rods had bent like wax. Plumbing collapsed. Everywhere the stale smell of extinguished embers hung in the air.

The search team sifted through the charred rubble on their hands and knees. Areas where human remains were thought most likely to be found were cordoned off with string in quadrants. Often the evidence in such cases is so fragile that special care is needed in handling it. Photographs are taken and observations made before evidence is moved, in case it crumbles during transit.

“It’s difficult with a fire. Everything’s charred, so you’re dealing with mostly shape, identifiable anatomical shapes, because the wood and debris is also charred and mixed up together. It’s like a needle in a haystack,” said Mike Bowers, a forensic dentist.

“You’ve got to be thinking about the job that needs to be done and why you’re doing that job,” added Gerald Vale, chief forensic dental consultant with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. “You can’t dwell on the human factors or the total impact of the thing. That gets to you usually when you get home--and lives with you in some cases for sometime afterward.”

Authorities continued their search until dark Saturday. “We think she’s there from the story told by family members. . . . We want to find her,” Suchey said.

But as the hours passed for Blanding with no word of her daughter, there was time for only tears.

“My daughter never did anything like this. She has always been a homebody,” Blanding said Saturday. “For her to just disappear off the face of the Earth . . . I just don’t understand it. I just don’t understand it.”