Sprinklers ‘99% Installed’ at Time of Apartment Fire

Emergency fire sprinklers that city officials had ordered installed earlier this year were not hooked up when a Sunday morning arson blaze forced almost 400 residents to flee a Hollywood apartment complex, authorities said.

A senior inspector for the city Building and Safety Department, Domingo Sauceda, said an inspection in February, 1986, revealed that required safety equipment had not been installed at the Canterbury Apartments, 1746 N. Cherokee Ave.

Sauceda said the building’s owner, Daniel Wiener of Newport Beach, had been given a year to install the equipment. When an inspection last month showed that the equipment still had not been installed, a hearing was set for today before a city attorney’s hearing officer to determine why the order had not been followed, Sauceda said.

Nearly Completed

Wiener said the fire safety work was just short of completion. “We have paid for the work,” he said. “My guess is that any delay probably resulted from a lot of work being done in the fire safety area.”

Sauceda said the sprinklers appear to be “99% installed . . . including the installation of a (water) meter for the sprinklers and a water supply main. We want to determine why the system was not connected.

“Had the sprinklers been working,” he said, “it would have helped contain the fire, although probably not dramatically.”

Besides a sprinkler system, Sauceda said, Wiener had been ordered to install smoke detectors and fire doors that close automatically to halt the spread of flames. Sauceda said that equipment was operational and “worked beautifully.”

Sauceda said Wiener is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Thursday on two misdemeanor charges for failing to install sprinklers at another apartment complex he owns at 756 S. Normandie Ave.

Deadline Not Met

Failure to comply with an installation order carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, officials said.

“The work has been done,” Sauceda said of the Normandie apartments, “but he failed to meet the deadline and we have no authority to withdraw the charges.”

Wiener declined to discuss the case.

No one was injured in the fire at the Canterbury Apartments, which caused an estimated $75,000 damage to the structure and $325,000 damage to the contents, fire officials said.

Sauceda said most of the fire damage was confined to the fourth floor, but that there is extensive water damage throughout the building. The fire was started on the roof of the 90-unit structure, fire officials said.

Time for Repairs

Sauceda said that it will take about two weeks to repair the damage so that at least some of the residents can move back into their apartments.

The 82-year-old building was one of the first large apartment complexes in Hollywood. It was closed in 1979 by the Building and Safety Department after numerous arson fires and years of disrepair had turned it into a dilapidated slum. It reopened after a major face lift in 1980.

A Red Cross spokesman, Ralph Wright, said 170 of the displaced residents stayed overnight Sunday and Monday in a temporary shelter operated by the Red Cross in the Hollywood High School gymnasium. The shelter is expected to remain open through tonight.