Legacy of RTD Bus Crash: Hungry People

Before noon on most days, knots of homeless people have already begun to gather outside the Soul Clinic Mission at 5th Street and Towne Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, waiting their turn to enter the dining room for a hot meal.

Aside from a construction crew working on a storm drain Thursday, however, the “Nickel” (as street people refer to 5th Street) was virtually deserted near the mission. The facility’s dining room, which had served as many as 1,500 people a day, was closed--a casualty of a traffic accident that forced a Southern California Rapid Transit District bus into the building’s wall on Wednesday.

At least 30 people were injured, none seriously, when a car apparently ran a red light and broadsided the bus, slamming the bus into the dining room’s wall. The bus punched through the wall, shattering a plate-glass window and showering a portion of the room with glass and plaster.

“We’ve had to shut down our facility because of the accident,” mission director the Rev. Russell Sanderson said Thursday. “Some 1,500 homeless people will go hungry today.”

And the estimated 165 people who once spent the night in the mission’s dormitories will have to find somewhere else to sleep, he said.

Sanderson added, however, that the 36-year-old mission will begin serving cold lunches, mainly sandwiches, today. And because city inspectors have declared the building structurally sound, he said, the dormitories will be reopened Monday.

Damage to the building was not covered by insurance, Sanderson said, and the mission has no funds for repairs. As a result, the minister said, he is urgently appealing for construction advice and help as well as donations.

“Electrical wiring is exposed, gas pipes may need replacement, concrete must be poured and dry wall erected,” he said.

The minister had no estimate of damage to the building, but he said he is certain that repairs will cost several thousand dollars.

Compounding the mission’s problems is an order from Los Angeles Fire Department officials that the organization repair a stand pipe that was damaged in the accident by next Tuesday.

“The Fire Department said we have to repair the pipe regardless of who was at fault in the accident,” Sanderson said. “They said they didn’t know how much it would cost.”