In the Library Ashes, There Is Some Hope : Aggressive Work by Firefighters Is Credited With Holding Down the Loss

Quick, aggressive salvage work by the Fire Department was credited Wednesday with limiting the loss of books and documents in the stubborn blaze that ravaged the historic Los Angeles Central Library.

And, in a rare display of self-criticism, some City Council members blamed themselves for failing to correct fire dangers in the building, which had been pointed out again and again by safety experts.

At least 80% of the downtown library’s collection of about 2 million books was saved, according to library officials. It was first feared that the destruction would be much greater. Chief Librarian Wyman H. Jones told the Council that the most valuable items appeared to be undamaged.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Capt. Tony DiDomenico explained why so many books and documents were saved. He said Deputy Fire Chief Don Anthony, who directed the more than 250 firefighters who battled the fire for six hours, sent three of the department’s special salvage teams into the burning building with the first wave of hosemen to begin covering books with protective tarpaulins and plastic sheeting.

Not long afterward, he said, about 100 firefighters not directly engaged in battling the flames pitched in to cover books to protect them from water and smoke damage. Firefighters and salvage crews, he said, performed “a miracle.”

The massive job of removing books and cleaning up the badly damaged interior of the 60-year-old library was still under way at nightfall Wednesday, more than 30 hours after the blaze broke out in the second-floor stack area in the northeast quadrant.

Small spot fires, smoldering deep within books that had collapsed into piles, were still burning. Hose lines were spraying water onto the fires, while pumps were sucking ashy water out of the basement.

Arson investigators, who spent all of Wednesday probing the blackened, book-littered interior of the nation’s third-largest municipal library, still had not determined whether the fire was deliberately set or accidental. They said arson had not been ruled out.

There was no official damage figure, but there was little doubt that it would be in the millions.

After a report by Fire Chief Donald Manning, council members uncharacteristically took some of the blame for not acting on repeated fire safety violations at the library reported by fire inspectors. They also took some responsibility for the long delays in getting the library reconstruction and expansion project under way.

“We had the library on tap, ready to go,” Councilman Gilbert Lindsay said. “It could have been fixed up two or three times. . . . We all were at fault.”

“We didn’t move fast enough,” Councilman Robert Farrell added. “The library just did not get that level of political attention.”

Council members also were concerned about the lack of emergency preparations for such disasters. Farrell and Councilman Joel Wachs asked City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie’s office to prepare a list of city buildings that pose a fire or earthquake threat.

DiDomenico said the structural damage did not seem too great, although some parts of the concrete walls disintegrated under the intense heat, exposing steel reinforcing rods.

Fire Chief Manning, briefing the council, said it was the toughest structural fire that he had encountered during his 30 years with the department. Forty-six firefighters and one civilian were injured, most suffering from smoke inhalation.

”. . . In over 30 years in the Fire Department in Los Angeles, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a structure fire that was nearly as difficult to fight,” Manning said. “This had all of the potential to cost lives in the fighting of the fire. If there’s a Level 10 of being scared, that had to be a Level 12.”

Manning said units fighting the blaze were aided by a “pre-fire plan” that the first responding units brought to the scene.

DiDomenico said the Fire Department had long been apprehensive about the potential for a disastrous fire in the library.

“Every oldtimer in the Fire Department predicted this fire,” he said.

At the same time he was praising the overall work of firefighters, DiDomenico said there may have been a delay of about a minute in commencing the battle against the blaze, because the first fire company to arrive was directed to a basement alarm panel by library security guards.

He said the firefighters thought it was a false alarm, but another company of firefighters arriving at about the same time saw “wisps” of smoke from windows on the upper floors of the three-story building and realized that there was an emergency.

The flammability of books, documents and photos--plus the “poke-through” construction of the open stacks on the four corners of the building, which acted like chimneys sucking up the flames--all combined to make the disaster almost inevitable, he said.

“Once that first stack got going, it was goodby Charley,” DiDomenico said.

Times staff writer Cathleen Decker assisted in this report.