Vapors Blamed for High-Rise Fire : Chemicals Ignited at Electric Outlet, Officials Believe

Vapors from a chemical used in an office remodeling project were ignited in a flash fire near the top of the 42-story Union Bank building, leaving one worker and two firefighters injured and causing $350,000 in damages, fire officials said today.

“It was accidental,” said city Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells about the cause of the fire. “Chemical vapors made contact with an electrical outlet,” he said, although it was still not clear how that actually ignited the fire.

Several workers--including Timie Pettignand who was treated at County-USC Medical Center for first- and second-degree burns to his right hand--had been stripping furniture in the offices of the law firm of Hill, Farrar and Burrill on the 34th floor when the blaze broke out about 8:20 p.m., fire officials said.

About 160 firefighters raced to the scene Monday night, with a strike team struggling up 34 floors carrying more than 100 pounds of gear apiece to reach the flames, said Fire Inspector Ed Reed. The fire, extinguished in 43 minutes, was confined to the 34th and 35th floors, where a pair of office suites were burned on the northwest side of each floor.

Firefighters used advanced communications gear and a new strategy to avoid the outcome of the devastating fire that tore through four floors of the First Interstate Bank tower three blocks away.

Stanley Tobin, a partner in the law firm that occupies the 34th and 35th floors of the building, said very few files were lost in the fire, despite the destruction in which everything along the north side of the 34th floor was charred.

Reporters touring the fire scene this morning found wires and piping hanging from the open ceiling. Paper, ash, glass and water covered the floor, and desks were turned to charcoal. A gold clock on one desk was stopped at 8:23.

All but two floors of the tower in downtown Los Angeles were reopened for business Tuesday, although some workers found their work stations still draped in tarps to shield them from smoke and water damage.

The fire was the second at a downtown high-rise in 11 weeks. Both fires were in buildings co-owned by Equitable Life Assurance Society of America.

Like the First Interstate Bank building, where flames gutted four floors and killed one man on May 4, the Union Bank building was in the process of being retrofitted with fire sprinklers, which could have drastically reduced the amount of damage in both blazes, fire officials said.