‘Like Paying Interest on a Debt’ : 1,500 Rally to Library’s Need in Ashes of Disaster

Hundreds of community volunteers driven by a shared love for the written word came to the rescue of the fire-scarred Los Angeles Central Library on Saturday and in an around-the-clock book brigade largely completed the crucial task of whisking more than 200,000 boxes of singed or soggy books into restorative cold storage.

From Castaic to San Juan Capistrano, so many turned out that library officials could not put them to work fast enough. There were college students, retirees, writers and business professionals.

Some labored throughout the night, while others worked only a few hours, wielding cellophane tape-guns to assemble special cardboard boxes and then gently lining them with damaged volumes, usually 10 to a pack.

“You can’t sit back and wait for someone else to solve your problems,” said Elbert Young, an unemployed janitor who pitched in. “What surprised me was how people came out. In this country, sometimes we wait too long to help.”

By afternoon, library spokesman Michael Leonard announced that the salvage work would be completed by about midnight and that volunteers would not be needed today. Central Library Director Betty Gay praised the estimated 1,500 workers for providing “fantastic support.” And she expressed confidence that “a high percentage” of damaged books had been successfully freeze-dried to prevent extensive mold and mildew within the 72-hour period that experts recommended.

The countdown began late Tuesday, after firefighters extinguished flames that roared through the upper floors of the historic downtown building at 5th and Hope streets. About 20% of the 2.25-million-book collection was destroyed. But restoration specialists said the remaining volumes, even with severe water and smoke damage, could be saved by the quick-freezing process.

So library officials put out a call for volunteers to handle the delicate transfer.

The rescue effort was an idealized portrait of the face of Los Angeles, a multi-ethnic corps of committed citizens determined to save a precious civic resource.

“People were just raring to go,” Leonard said, “and the volunteers that came in were just doing an incredible job. It’s because of the number of people who came out, and just the incredible effort they put in, that we’ll have the job completed.”

On Friday and Saturday, the lot adjacent to the library could have been a bivouac. Catering trucks dished up meals for the weary volunteers and library staffers. Bottled water stood in racks stacked six high, and blue-green portable latrines lined one wall. Volunteers moved continuously through the building like a hard-hatted army of ants, carrying thousands of boxes sized especially for books by a San Leandro manufacturer.

Boxes containing unharmed editions were marked with a large “D”--for dry--and the first three call letters of the Dewey Decimal System. Then they were shipped to a one-acre storage building at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Boxes of wet books were marked with a “W” and stacked waist-high on wooden pallets. Then workers bandaged each load with plastic “freeze wrap,” as if they were giant vegetables headed for a supermarket display case.

A rented fleet of a dozen semi-trucks lined up outside to take about 200 boxes at a time to one of three cold storage warehouses, the largest a Vernon facility owned by United Growers.

Response From Students

Many volunteers were like Nan Melia, a UCLA graduate student in epidemiology who drove from her Venice home. She had used the library system for years, but never actually set foot in its flagship structure.

“I’ve always been crazy about books,” she said, comfortably dressed in baggy slacks, a T-shirt and jogging shoes. “I thought as I was driving here, ‘If they put me some place saving trash romances, I’m not going to do it.’ ”

Melia said part of her decision to volunteer stemmed from the nuclear power plant accident in Chernobyl. “There’s nothing we can do to help those people there, but there is something we can do about this disaster here.”

Taping boxes a few feet away was San Fernando Valley real estate businessman Paul Dentzel, whose late father, Carl S. Dentzel, had been director of the Southwest Museum, the oldest in Southern California. “I know he would have been heartbroken to see this fire,” said the son. But the flood of volunteers, Dentzel said, “gives me a wonderful feeling of the community’s awareness.”

A Retiree’s Role

Said retiree Mary Peppmuller, who stood in the library’s west parking lot assembling box tops with her husband, Robert: “We saw the fire on TV and it broke my heart. I used to come here with my Dad as a kid.”

Sally Stewart, one of the volunteer organizers who worked through the night, declared that “this whole story will be about the public and private sectors working together.” She spoke of feeling a thrill when, just as the number of volunteers began to dwindle around midnight Friday, a column of 140 California Conservation Corps members appeared as reinforcements. “They had their goggles and their (blue hard) hats and their uniforms. I’ll tell you, you wanted to salute. It was wonderful.”

Actress Mary Marston, resting on a chair, described the turnout as “an act of love for every author that put a word on paper.” She said the library was “like an old ship that’s been in port for years “

While the volunteers worked, a 20-member team of city and federal investigators continued to investigate the cause of the fire, completing interviews with about half the 200 library employees, security guards, construction workers and patrons thought to have been in the building when the blaze began.

But late Saturday, Capt. Stephen Cohee of the Fire Department arson section said that so far, “We have no suspects. We are looking for a number of individuals to question about what they saw.”

Accident All but Ruled Out

Sources closely involved with the investigation have told The Times that accidental causes had been virtually ruled out, but investigators expected no official announcement on a cause until Monday at the earliest.

On Friday night, Alex Wu said he heard the call for volunteers on his car radio as he headed home from work. He grabbed a quick dinner before rushing to the library to help out.

“I go to the library every day,” said Wu, a junior at Cal Poly, Pomona. “When I heard they needed people, I knew that was a job I should do. It’s like paying interest on the debt I owe this place.”

By nightfall, powerful lights running on portable generators lit up an area on 5th Street in front of the library where trucks were being loaded, and a lot adjacent to the building where volunteers checked in and received their marching orders.

“It’s fabulous,” said Patti Ryan of the Tree People, the group coordinating the volunteers. “People of all sizes, shapes, colors and ages are coming. . . . We’ve had librarians come all the way from Sacramento to help out.”

Help From Corporations

Corporations--McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Citicorp--have contributed supplies from hard hats to food, Ryan said.

“I just wanted to help save the books,” said Lindsey Page of South-Central Los Angeles. “I saw the library burning. It was sad. A lot of history goes with this.”

In the library’s basement where water still stood in some aisles, poet and playwright Rita Williams Brown of Los Angeles fingered a damaged, folio-sized edition of official U.S. Presidential portraits.

“When I saw this place burning, it was like family dying,” she said. “These books are like holy things. What is incredible is what libraries say about this country--the fact that honesty is an option at all.”

Times staff writer Lois Timnick contributed to this story.