Short Circuit Gets Blame in High-Rise Fire

The Union Bank fire, the second downtown high-rise blaze in 11 weeks, was started when a worker refinishing a bookcase dragged a brush soaked with paint remover over an electrical outlet, causing a short circuit and a flash fire, fire investigators said Tuesday.

The fire in the 40-story office tower sent one worker to County-USC Medical Center for first- and second-degree burns on his right hand. Two firefighters were treated at the scene for heat exhaustion. About 60 people, including 30 office workers, had to be evacuated.

Fire officials estimated the damage at $500,000, including $100,000 to contents of the law offices of Hill, Farrer & Burrill, which occupies the 34th and 35th floors, where the blaze was contained in 43 minutes by 160 firefighters.

Damage to Offices

Five offices on the 34th floor were gutted and five to 10 offices were badly damaged. Four offices on the 35th floor had less severe damage, said William M. Bitting, a senior partner at Hill, Farrer.

Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said his men had “very, very quick response . . . within three minutes” from the time the first call came in through the 911 emergency line. “(You) can’t hardly beat a three-minute response,” he said. “They did a heck of a fine job.”

The fire was termed accidental by fire officials.

According to Manning, three workers--including Timie Pettignand, who was treated for burns--were finishing restoration on a large L-shaped bookcase that had built-in electrical outlets.

Pettignand and two other workers, all employees of the Professional Refinishing Organization, had been using a paint brush to apply a water-based paint stripper. They then scraped off the paint and applied a highly flammable paint thinner with a cloth.

They were going through the process for the second time when, fire officials said, one of the workers ran a wet paint brush over an exposed electrical outlet on the bookcase, causing a short circuit that generated an arc that ignited accumulated fumes from the thinner.

Officials said the damage and injuries could have been much worse--such as the one death and four heavily damaged floors at the First Interstate Bank fire in May--had it not been for a quick reporting and response to the blaze.

Because the Union Bank blaze, which broke out at 8:23 p.m., was a flash fire that spread rapidly at its outset, it was spotted quickly. Alarms were sounded immediately and a report was telephoned to the Fire Department on the 911 emergency number, officials said.

At First Interstate Bank, the fire had burned undiscovered for half an hour before alarms were sounded. Then there was a seven-minute gap between the time alarms were triggered and the Fire Department was alerted by callers in nearby buildings, officials said.

Difference in Buildings

The buildings’ architecture also made a difference. Union Bank, at 445 S. Figueroa St., is an older-style, compartmentalized structure with heavy walls that retard a fire’s progress. First Interstate has an open floor plan through which flames can travel much more quickly, experts said.

And perhaps just as important, fire officials learned lessons in the First Interstate fire that aided them in battling the blaze at Union Bank. In the First Interstate fire, radios linking firefighters on different floors and command officials outside failed to work, but new, more powerful radios prevented a communication problem Monday night.

But the biggest lesson, authorities said Tuesday, is illustrated by both blazes: Fire sprinkler systems can eliminate or at least severely restrict most office fires.

City Council President John Ferraro and Fire Chief Manning took advantage of the public attention focused on high-rise fires to seek public support for the city’s new fire sprinkler law.

That ordinance, approved by the council last week, was signed into law on Tuesday by Ferraro as acting mayor.

‘Watered-Down’ Legislation

He said the council also will work to defeat amendments in a state bill that he said would preempt the city’s three-year timetable and allow some owners up to nine years to install sprinklers.

Ferraro called the proposed state legislation a “watered-down” law and said he will fight it “all the way to the governor’s office.”

A spokesman for state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who authored the bill, said the City Council is trying to cover up the fact that it exempted residential buildings from the city ordinance under pressure from special interests.

Monday’s blaze also spurred Los Angeles County supervisors to action. The board agreed on Tuesday to draft an ordinance that would require public and privately owned high-rise buildings in unincorporated areas to install sprinkler systems.

The proposal, pushed by Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, lacked any details specifying precisely what buildings would be affected and when the sprinkler requirement would begin.

The Union Bank building, like most pre-1974 high-rises, had no sprinklers. Any building constructed in California after that year is required to have sprinklers.

Both Union Bank and First Interstate were in the process of installing sprinklers when the fires broke out.

At the Union Bank building, sprinklers have been installed on four floors but are not operational. A spokesman said the owners hope to have sprinklers on seven floors operational by the end of the year. There is no firm date for completion of the entire building, the spokesman said.

Both bank towers are co-owned by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America. Its partner at Union Bank is Nissei Realty Inc., a Japanese investment concern. Its partner at the other building is First Interstate Bancorp.

Manning said his staff will investigate to see if any laws were violated by the refinishers. “I don’t think they were following good procedures,” he said. “They should have disconnected the electricity. They should have had better venting.”

A member of the family that owns Professional Refinishing, Alberto G. Stassis, said by telephone, “After all the years we’ve been in business, we’ve never had any problems.” He declined further comment.

Attorney Sounds Alarm

Also working on the 34th floor Monday night was Neil D. Martin, an attorney in the law office where the fire started. Martin was talking with a client when he heard a commotion at the far end of the floor and smelled smoke.

After escorting his client to the elevator, Martin, a former part-time firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, searched for the source of the blaze, pulled a fire alarm and grabbed an extinguisher. His efforts were to no avail, and he quickly left the floor.

When the alarm first sounded, the building security chief momentarily believed it to be false alarm caused by asbestos-abatement workers on the 22nd floor, according to building manager Ed Beluin.

The asbestos workers had been conducting tests to determine if the floor was air tight before beginning to scrape the cancer-causing material from the ceiling.

A security guard in the plaza-level control room was initially confused, Beluin said, and declared that the alarm was a drill. “But within seconds,” Beluin said, he saw that there was a fire on the 34th floor and announced on the intercom: “There is fire in progress. Please evacuate the building.”

‘Files Intact’

Stanley Tobin, senior partner with Hill, Farrer, said not much was lost in the fire.

“What lawyers think is bad is when their files are gone . . . 99% of (the) files are intact,” Tobin said.

Still, wires and piping hung from the open ceiling. Paper, ash, glass and water littered the floor and desks were turned to charcoal. A gold clock on one executive’s desk was stopped at 8:23 p.m.

All but the two floors of the tower affected by the fire were reopened for business on Tuesday, though some workers found their work stations still draped in tarpaulins to shield them from smoke and water damage.

Uniform of the Day

Jefferies & Co., an institutional stock brokerage firm, occupies the 33rd floor of the building. Executive Vice President Rusty McDonnell said the firm opened at 4 a.m. for business as usual--sort of.

Dressed in Bermuda shorts, sneakers and a polo shirt, McDonnell, 44, of San Marino said, “We have a little different uniform of the day today.” He said there was water and smoke damage, but the firm’s computers were operating and business got under way on time.

Others of the 2,500 workers in the building showed up in more typical attire and, except for the fire engines and fire personnel, who remained at the building for much of the day, things appeared normal.

Another blaze broke out just after noon Tuesday in the fire-ravaged First Interstate Bank building, but the flames were quickly extinguished and damage was confined to a small closet on the 57th floor.

Jerry Poppink, a spokesman for the building’s owners, said the fire was discovered by a roving fire watch that the company has employed since the disastrous May 4 fire.

Poppink said the blaze, which charred some posters but caused no injuries or structural damage, was quelled by the fire watch crew before city firefighters arrived.

Cause of the fire was under investigation.

Times staff writers Ted Vollmer, David Ferrell and Victor Merina contributed to this story.

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