Resistance to Sprinkler Retrofitting Predicted : Fire Chief Cites Past Battles as City Officials Move to Require Systems in Older Buildings

Spurred by this week’s disastrous First Interstate Bank building fire, Los Angeles officials Friday revived previously rejected proposals to retrofit older high-rise buildings with sprinkler systems.

But citing past fights to enact tough fire laws, Fire Chief Donald Manning predicted strong opposition from cost-conscious downtown business interests.

“I think we will have a major effort to either not have such an ordinance (to require retrofitting) or to reduce the impact,” Manning said.

Mayor Tom Bradley, who is on a trade mission in Australia, dispatched a letter to top officials requesting “that you immediately form a task group . . . to recommend to me and the City Council, as soon as possible, an ordinance to mandate the retrofitting of older high-rise structures with fire sprinklers and other safety devices.”

City Council members Nate Holden and Ernani Bernardi, meanwhile, proposed related motions requiring sprinkler systems in hundreds of high-rises built before 1974 and to study other ways of preventing the spread of high-rise fires. Despite their apparent common interest in dealing with the high-rise issue, sparks flew between the two lawmakers over how to solve it.

“If you had done your job in 1974, we wouldn’t have this problem today,” Holden, who was elected to the council last year, shouted at Bernardi.

“If you had been with us when we made this proposal you would have voted against it like other members of the council,” Bernardi shot back.

In fact, fire officials said Friday, while council members passed a law in 1974--patterned after state legislation--that mandated sprinkler systems in all new buildings of more than 75 feet in height, they never considered whether to include existing buildings.

The council will consider Holden’s mandated retrofitting proposal next week.

Manning said public safety, not arguments about the cost of sprinklers, should be the prime consideration.

“Any time we have come forward with any type of ordinance that requires additional installation of fire protection systems,” opposition is voiced by those who are affected by the costs, Manning said.

“When we look at the situation we’re in--the millions of dollars lost in property damage and the fact that we lost a human life--as a fire chief I can never agree with anything that trades off dollars for lives,” Manning told a crowd of reporters. Sprinkler systems “should be installed; the owner’s problem of installing it is working out the economics of it.” Experts estimated Friday that retrofitting a high-rise could cost as much as $2 per square foot.

Manning and a host of other fire officials said that if the First Interstate building, built in 1971, had been equipped with a working automatic sprinkler system, the damage would have been confined to a small area. Building owners were in the process of installing a new sprinkler system when the fire broke out late Wednesday night on the 12th floor of the 62-story tower.

Geoffrey Ely, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Assn., which represents most of the downtown high-rise owners in the city, stopped short of announcing opposition to a sprinkler retrofitting law. But he warned that many older high-rises that do not now fall under sprinkler laws may be unable to accommodate the new systems.

“Our organization would simply tell (the city) they would be running against some constraints that some buildings couldn’t comply with and their only alternative is to close the building down,” Ely said.

Similar warnings were issued more than a decade ago when Fire Department officials first attempted to require sprinkler system retrofitting in older high-rises, according to veteran Councilman Bernardi and Deputy Fire Chief Craig Drummond.

“There was a lot of complaining about the cost and (building owners) were threatening to move out of the city to Orange County,” Bernardi said.

Task Force Member

Drummond, meanwhile, was on a task force at the time that examined the idea of retrofitting existing buildings and said the question always was met with stiff resistance.

“They’d say there is not enough proven history, you’ll run us out of business, all the old downtown area will be a ghost town,” Drummond recalled. “Every time we tried to put a package together that we thought would accomplish something significant, we faced strong opposition.” He added that there was even strong opposition at the time to a law requiring automatic sprinklers in new buildings.

Before the City Council passed its ordinance in 1974 requiring new sprinkler systems in new high-rise buildings, the Fire Department sounded out several council members to determine the chances of a retrofitting ordinance. The consensus was that such a plan was politically unattainable, Drummond said, and therefore a formal proposal was never made.

Former City Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, who chaired the council’s Police, Fire and Civil Defense Committee at the time, said Friday that he does not recall ever being approached about retrofitting. But he said the lack of sprinkler systems in the pre-1974 high-rises did not seem to be a problem.

“I don’t think anyone had any serious thoughts about it,” said Snyder, now a lobbyist who represents some downtown interests.

Manning told reporters that after the spectacular November, 1976, fire on the 20th floor of the 32-story Occidental Tower on South Hill Street, the question of retrofitting again was raised within the department and rejected. In that blaze, three firefighters were injured but there were no fatalities.

Seen as Pointless

The fire chief said he has never before formally proposed a sprinkler retrofitting ordinance to the City Council, indicating that he thought it would be pointless.

“We had a law in place,” Manning explained. “We had not had an incident to indicate that the law was insufficient and therefore I had no evidence to bring to the City Council, only my professional feelings that we were sitting on a disaster.”

Manning said Friday that in the wake of the First Interstate Bank fire, the time may be ripe for a strong law.

The idea of requiring existing buildings to install sprinkler systems is not a new one, either in Los Angeles or elsewhere. But the requirement has never applied to high-rises in Los Angeles.

In 1984, two years after a fire swept through the Dorothy Mae Apartment Hotel killing 24 people, the city enacted a law requiring automatic sprinklers in stairways and hallways of all multiple-dwelling buildings built before 1943. It was in 1943 that stricter fire safety standards had been enacted.

The 1984 ordinance affected more than 1,300 buildings citywide and most have now completed the sprinkler system installations, said Fire Commission President Harold Kwalwasser.

Manning said that sprinkler systems are also required in about 10,000 homes in the city that are either too far from a fire station or are set back so far from the street that they are inaccessible to a fire truck. Fire experts said sprinkler technology has been available for about 100 years and that it is widely known that sprinklers are almost 100% effective against fires. But with the exception of Nevada and a few other jurisdictions, tough retrofitting laws have not been enacted.

After the 1980 MGM Hotel fire disaster in Las Vegas, the state of Nevada required the sprinkler retrofitting of any hotel more than 55 feet tall and any building with an assembly area of more than 5,000 square feet.

“Nevada has the toughest law in the nation,” said Tom Huddleston, former Nevada fire marshal. “I am absolutely convinced that there is no way you can fight a high-rise fire without having a fire sprinkler system.”

In December, 1986, Massachusetts adopted a law requiring automatic sprinklers in all buildings taller than 70 feet that were built before 1975. And earlier this week, the Connecticut Legislature passed a bill requiring retrofitting of sprinklers for all hotels and motels.

In New York City, meanwhile, owners of older buildings at least 100 feet in height have an option of either retrofitting with sprinklers or altering their buildings to keep a fire that starts on one floor from spreading to others.

John Viniello, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Assn., said that all 50 states have laws requiring automatic sprinklers in certain new structures, whether high-rise office buildings, hotels, or both. In a related development, the California Fire Chief’s Assn. called Friday for legislation requiring automatic sprinkler systems for all buildings in California at least seven stories high. Association President Richard Bridges said the First Interstate Bank fire “only highlights and re-emphasizes the need and long-held concern of all fire agencies who must protect high-rises.”

State Fire Marshal James McMullen said that more than 1,000 high-rise buildings in California now lack automatic sprinklers.

Twenty-eight of those high-rises without sprinklers are in Los Angeles County’s unincorporated area, county Fire Chief John Englund said.

“The public should demand that the buildings they reside in, live in and work in have those sprinklers,” Englund said. “We’ve been asking for a long time.”

One of Englund’s bosses, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, on Friday called for a review of county fire codes dealing with the placement of sprinklers in buildings of at least eight stories and in county facilities such as hospitals and courthouses.

WORST HIGH-RISE OFFICE FIRES The most catastrophic high-rise office fire was Feb. 1, 1974, when 179 people were killed in the 25-story Joelma Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The worst in the U.S. occurred July 28,1945, when 11 died in the resulting fire when a plane crashed into an upper floor of the Empire State Building. Fatal fires in high-rise apartments and hotels are more prevalent, including the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas that killed 85 and the 1986 fire in Puerto Rico that killed 96.

WORST U.S. HIGH-RISE OFFICE FIRES SINCE 1970

Building City Stories Aug. 21, 1986 580 Building Cincinnati 14 Sept. 5, 1984 Under Construction San Diego 24 Aug. 12, 1984 Gibraltar Bldg. Newark, N.J. 14 Sept. 22, 1981 Willoughby Bldg. Chicago 38 May 10, 1977 U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Bldg. Baltimore 40 Nov. 29, 1972 Rault Center New Orleans 16 April 8, 1971 John Hancock Bldg. Chicago 100 Dec. 4, 1970 919 3rd Ave. Bldg. New York 47 Aug. 5, 1970 One New York Plaza New York 50

Fatalities Aug. 21, 1986 1 Sept. 5, 1984 2 Aug. 12, 1984 1 Sept. 22, 1981 2 May 10, 1977 1 Nov. 29, 1972 6 April 8, 1971 1 Dec. 4, 1970 3 Aug. 5, 1970 2

DEADLIEST IN UNITED STATES

Building City Stories Fatalities July 28, 1945 Empire State Building New York 102 11 Jan. 9, 1912 Equitable Building New York 10 6 Dec. 5, 1968 Atlanta Gaslight Tower Atlanta 24 4 Nov. 22, 1961 The Times Tower New York 25 3 Feb. 7, 1968 Borax Building Los Angeles 9 1

Source: National Fire Protection Assn.