The Fire’s Lessons

The Los Angeles Fire Department demonstrated bravery and skill Wednesday night as flames poured out of the First Interstate Bank building downtown. Firefighters, paramedics and helicopter pilots worked in intense heat and smoke in and around the city’s tallest building, rescuing several trapped victims and controlling the fire within hours. Chief among several lessons to be learned from this high-rise fire is that the Fire Department is an asset to be honored.

The scene was a firefighter’s nightmare: Flames first poured from the windows around an entire floor before the blaze leaped to other floors a dozen stories above ground. One person, who was later found dead, was trapped in a freight elevator. Smoke quickly filled stairwells. Firefighters carried water to the scene and watched it turn to steam. The radio system failed, and running couriers became the only communication network in the 62-story building.

Spectators watching the fire asked the obvious question: Where was the sprinkler system? The bank skyscraper was built before the enactment of a state law in 1974 that requires sprinklers in all buildings more than 75 feet tall. City Fire Marshal Craig Drummond said that the building management was voluntarily installing a sprinkler system; the project was 90% complete.

The bank building’s sprinkler system cost about $3.5 million. The fire caused damage that will cost many times more than that to repair. Four floors, some of which contained rooms of computer equipment, were destroyed. Smoke damage occurred on the floors above the flames, and water damage on the floors below.

Sprinkler systems represent “the state of the art in having a safe building,” Fire Chief Donald Manning told the Fire Commission on Thursday morning. “We would be derelict not to push for retrofitting” as many buildings as possible. If the state won’t act to require more older high-rises to have sprinkler systems, the city must. Several Los Angeles City Council members and fire commissioners have already supported changing the fire safety code.

The city started taking action after a September, 1982, fire at the Dorothy Mae apartments on Sunset Boulevard. Just this month the installation of sprinkler systems at 1,200 of the worst apartment buildings has been finished. But 500 to 600 high-rises, mainly commercial buildings, remain without sprinklers.

This week’s fire could have been far worse had it occurred during office hours. There were, nevertheless, some workers trapped on upper floors. They learned the truth in the advice that one should remain calm even in the face of a terrifying blaze, and they were rescued because they had remained in a comparatively safe place. The major lesson, however, remains that adequate sprinkler systems are needed in far more buildings. They greatly increase the chances that neither the Fire Department nor the people who work in high-rises need face such terror in the first place.