Los Angeles Communications

During the past few days, hundreds of calls to Los Angeles city offices in the San Fernando Valley, including non-emergency police calls, have gone unanswered because of human error and technical breakdowns in the city's phone system, officials said Monday. The phone problems began Friday when the city eliminated five different prefixes for city offices in the Valley and replaced them with one prefix, 756. But instead of simplifying the system, the change--at least temporarily--created chaos.

After years of America's worst cellular phone service, relief for Southern California may be at hand. Well, sort of. Metropolitan Los Angeles is about to become the first place in America to get the next generation of wireless phone service--one that boosters claim will ease congestion, vastly expand capacity and open the door to the technological personal-information wizardry of tomorrow. But before you rush out to sign up, beware.

In the grim aftermath of the earthquake, computer-linked bulletin boards hummed furiously as people searched for lost relatives ("Can't reach Mom and Dad--Please help!!") or just solace ("Does anybody there feel as frightened as me?") Using their home computers, many of those who still had electric power sought ways to negotiate quake-damaged roads. ("Need suggestions for the best way to get from Santa Monica to L.A. County Hospital.") They swapped pet stories.

Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla, whose recommendations on the hotly contested issue of high-speed Internet access on city-franchised cable lines have been awaited for months, said Monday that he will ask his colleagues to join him in demanding that cable companies provide open access as a condition of their agreements with the city. If accepted by the council, Padilla's proposal would represent a major shift in the way Los Angeles regulates cable companies.

Her neighborhood in flames around her, the Korean-born woman stood trapped inside her beauty shop as rowdy mobs descended. Panicked, she did what hundreds of Koreans started doing the moment riots began ravaging Los Angeles: She picked up a telephone and called Radio Korea, 1580 on the AM dial. And then unfolded a drama repeated time and again at the height of last week's revolt: An urgent message, in Korean, was broadcast over Radio Korea's airwaves. "Woman in trouble. This is the address.

ALTHOUGH HE IS ONE OF THE TOP students learning English at the Wilshire Language School in Koreatown, Doo Hun Park said he rarely practices his English outside the classroom. "When I drop by a supermarket, a Korean restaurant or a liquor store, I don't say anything in English," said Park, 31, who moved to Koreatown from Seoul 1 1/2 years ago. "Everything here is catered to us."

Just months after the trauma of devastating fires, Southern Californians endured a new round of frightening TV reports Monday. The Northridge quake followed recent edgy TV reports about a succession of smaller temblors. For many residents, however, the terror of the moment became even more uncertain when they could not see the effects of the killer quake because power outages blacked out TV in some areas. For those people, radio coverage became the main conduit of information.

By next spring, residents who want to call Los Angeles police about a cat stuck in a tree, to complain about a parking ticket or any other nonemergency matter will be able to dial a toll-free number. The City Council allocated $415,000 this week for creation of a toll-free Los Angeles Police Department number. The LAPD has eight nonemergency phone numbers, said Lt. John Egan, who is overseeing the effort. The old LAPD numbers will eventually be reduced.

Consider the fax of life, a tale of two cities. While Washington, D.C., this week paused from its scandals, crises and politics to work itself into a lightning strike against high-tech "junk mail," in Los Angeles, a smoggier but saner clime, the effort drew a different reaction. In brief, Angelenos say they're unfazed by junk fax. They get them, plenty of them. They don't like them. They don't read them.

Rocked along with the region that depends on them for information, Los Angeles-area newspapers made sometimes herculean efforts this week to reach their readers. And although media outlets lost revenue when the temblors cut off their phone lines and temporarily shut down advertising offices, none expects much long-term financial harm from the damage. Hardest hit was the Daily News, headquartered in Woodland Hills. Spokeswoman Lynne T.