Council Panels OK Law on High-Rise Fire Sprinklers

A citywide law requiring that hundreds of older commercial office towers be retrofitted with automatic sprinklers and fire-resistant elevator lobbies was unanimously endorsed Monday by two Los Angeles City Council committees.

The proposed ordinance, an outgrowth of the disastrous May 4 fire at the 62-story First Interstate Bank building in downtown Los Angeles, would apply to buildings 75 feet high or more. Fire officials have said that the fire, which left one person dead and 40 injured, would have caused minimal damage had a working sprinkler system been installed.

Proponents of the proposed law, first put forth by Mayor Tom Bradley, said the new requirements will win approval when they come before the full City Council in the next several weeks.

For now, the new law will apply only to about 350 commercial buildings built before a 1974 state law required sprinklers in all new high-rises. Members of the Police, Fire and Public Safety Committee and the Building and Safety Committee said they want more information on what impact requiring sprinklers in about 103 residential high-rises would have on renters.

Bradley proposed the retrofitting law shortly after the First Interstate fire devastated five floors of the city’s tallest skyscraper. Councilmen Nate Holden and Richard Alatorre proposed similar measures.

Major opposition from building owners to retrofitting, first predicted by fire officials when they proposed the sprinkler requirement, never materialized. But the Building Owners and Managers Assn. did voice opposition to requiring older high-rises to install fire-resistant doors on two sides of elevator lobbies. Such doors would automatically close during a fire to prevent smoke from entering elevator shafts.

Geoffrey Ely, executive director of the building organization, said Monday that on top of the sprinkler requirement, the elevator vestibule provision would be too costly. He added that the requirement also is unnecessary because state law now requires the fire doors to be installed during high-rise renovations.

Ely also said that in many cases, office building owners could face heavy financial losses due to relocating tenants during the retrofitting. His comments triggered an angry reply from Holden, who said Ely was describing worst-case scenarios that would not apply across the board.

“The bottom line is going to be M-O-N-E-Y and T-I-M-E,” Holden said. “You’ll find a way to get (the retrofitting) done or you won’t occupy” the buildings, he warned.

Building owners raised no objection to the third requirement proposed by Bradley--the installation of a roof vent on all high-rises to allow heat, smoke and gases to escape. Newer high-rises have expensive pressurized stairwells that provide a more effective means of venting dangerous gases, but fire officials have said the cheaper vents would be effective in certain circumstances.

While rejecting Ely’s request to drop the elevator lobby provision, the two committees agreed that building owners should have more time to comply with the new law if they are required to remove dangerous asbestos before installation can move forward. For decades, until the early 1970s, asbestos was used as a fire retardant and insulating material in buildings.

Debate over the costly removal of asbestos consumed much of the three-hour hearing over the retrofitting ordinance. While installing sprinklers may cost several dollars per square foot, asbestos removal can cost upwards of $20 per square foot, industry sources said.

Another concern raised by committee members was whether the proposed ordinance’s aggressive three-year timetable for retrofitting can be met because of a shortage of trained installers.