In the Aftermath: $22 Million Loss at Cal State L.A.

Earthquake damage at California State University, Los Angeles, amounted to at least $22 million and could go as high as $30 million, school officials said Wednesday. The minimum figure was nearly three times earlier estimates of total damage to public facilities caused by the Oct. 1 temblor and its aftershocks.

At a campus news conference, Cal State L.A. President James M. Rosser and W. Ann Reynolds, chancellor of the California State University system, said that based on assurances from Gov. George Deukmejian they hope money for permanent repairs will come out of state emergency reserve funds and not their own capital budget.

In Sacramento, a spokeswoman for the governor said Deukmejian wants the state Office of Emergency Services to send in its own inspectors to estimate damages. She said the governor favors the expenditure of state emergency funds on the repairs, but probably will have to seek a special authorization from the Legislature.

The spokeswoman noted that Deukmejian has already raised the possibility of calling a special legislative session to deal with the funding of earthquake-related aid.

Reynolds and Rosser said that most of the damage consisted of “structural rifts” in three buildings--Salazar Hall, where business classes are taught; a wing of Martin Luther King Hall, the campus’s largest classroom facility; and a connecting bridge between wings of the John F. Kennedy Library. They said Wednesday that they could not tell how long the repairs would take.

The state Office of Emergency Services earlier estimated total earthquake damage to public buildings and roads at $8.1 million.

The school is reopening today, after a week’s closure, with certain facilities still roped off. However, the county’s High School for the Arts, which is located on the Cal State campus, will remain closed until Monday.

In another announcement, the educators said the university plans to add additional anchoring pins to several hundred concrete slabs affixed to parking structures on campus. One of these slabs fell during the main quake, striking and killing microbiology student Lupe Elias-Exposito, 23.

The disclosure that the slabs would be more strongly attached came one day after state Architect Michael J. Bocchicchio said records showed that another slab fell from an adjacent parking structure about 16 years ago.

“We believe it followed the Sylmar quake (of 1971), although we have not pinpointed any dates,” he said.

A Cal State spokeswoman said she believed the first slab fell in 1976 and was not connected to the 1971 quake. No one was hurt in the earlier incident, she said.

Bocchicchio said he has been informed that after the first slab fell, its connection to the garage superstructure was reinforced.

Brace Replaced

Pat Campbell, chief of the structure safety section of the architect’s office, said records indicate that a brace was replaced with welded connections and that additional reinforcing steel was used.,

In the earlier incident, the concrete slab fell from the upper level of the southern portion of the two-deck parking structure, which had been built in 1966, Bocchicchio said.

The northern portion--from which the panel fell in last Thursday’s earthquake--was built along with the campus’ physical science tower in 1971.

Both Bocchicchio and Campbell said they believed that the northern section had already been completed when the concrete slab fell from the southern section.

The two architectural officials said they toured the Cal State L.A. campus on Friday, along with unidentified private consultants to the university.

They said the exact cause of the slab’s fall last week has not yet been established. But they noted it was connected to the superstructure in a different manner from those in the southern portion of the garage.