L.A. Rescinds Safety Testing Regulation for Elevator Parts
A ground-breaking city policy that required safety testing of elevator parts in Los Angeles has been rescinded in the face of industry opposition, and a similar policy pertaining to high-voltage electrical equipment may face the same fate.
The changes are unlikely to have any immediate discernible impact on public safety because the policies were designed to prevent problems rather than correct them.
“We were trying to be pro-active, to prevent mass tragedy,” said the author of the policies, Robert J. Picott, deputy superintendent of the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department.
“But usually it takes a catalyst--sometimes many people need to be maimed or killed--to bring about change. . . . We’re in the health and safety business. ‘Safety’ is in our title. But the reaction of the industry was, ‘We’ll let you know when we think it’s necessary to take these precautions.”
Complaints Received
Warren O’Brien, executive officer of the department, said the department had received steady complaints from manufacturers and some of the department’s own inspectors.
O’Brien said the elevator policy had been revoked earlier this summer. And, “if we find we are being too restrictive” on high-voltage policy, he added, “we could pretty well back off of it.”
The policies, the first such in the nation, have caused bitter controversy within the department. Officials on one side claim Picott was “acting like God” in implementing them, and others claim the department is “caving in” to big business.
“We are all constantly under pressure from manufacturers and builders to approve,” said another top official who asked not to be named. “Here I tell people to do this, do that, to enforce the code. What kind of message do you think this sends out?”
O’Brien said new policies will be drafted with input from recently formed “technical advisory committees” that include industry representatives.
Building and Safety Department officials are scheduled to brief the Building and Safety Commission on the elevator policy today.
Rescinded Three Months Ago
The policy was drafted in the early 1980s and rescinded about three months ago. It required safety testing by an independent lab--a practice called listing--of electrical parts inside elevators before the elevators were installed. The old policy, formulated in 1977, required on-site inspections of new elevators after installation and annual inspections thereafter.
Elevator manufacturers claimed the new policy caused construction delays and needless expense.
During the more than two years that the policy was in force, the city’s lab rejected some foreign-made parts that Simeon Rico, chief of the electrical division, said might have caused fires.
He said some small companies complied fully with the policy, while others, including some larger companies, never fully complied.
At one point, more than 1,000 elevators were operating under temporary permits while manufacturers had parts tested, according to chief city elevator inspector Harvey Ledesma.
Ledesma said he knew of no significant elevator accidents in recent Los Angeles history that merited such painstaking procedures, and considered resigning if the policy had not been revoked.
“If I thought an elevator wasn’t safe I’d know when to close it down,” he said. “ . . . I also feel very strongly that the way you do things with code is you develop a consensus. L.A. was a little ahead of the times on this.”
If the policy caused confusion in the industry, its rescission caused consternation even among those who oppose it.
“We finally got all of our parts into 100% compliance,” said Jim Butler of Amtech Reliable Elevator Co. “Then we were told the city no longer required it. . . . I was mad. We spent thousands of dollars to comply, and some of our competition . . . got a free ride waiting it out while we alienated our customers.”
The controversy over safety testing for high-voltage equipment has been equally intense.
It was drafted in 1985, Picott said, after he began noticing a nationwide pattern of troubling trends with equipment between 600 and about 34,500 volts. Such equipment, traditionally considered high voltage, is now being redesignated “medium voltage.”
Once handled exclusively by utilities, the equipment is now being installed in high-rise buildings and other crowded areas, Picott said. He estimated that 5% of major buildings have it today, compared to less than 1% 20 years ago. Because it can explode with nearly volcanic force, the equipment is usually sealed in cement vaults in basements or occasionally on rooftops.
“We also began to discern a national pattern, mostly small stuff here and there--cables blowing up inside commercial buildings, hundreds of small fires or explosions where nobody was around when something blew,” he said.
He estimated that there are 10 to 100 deaths and injuries nationwide a year due to such incidents. So, he said, he gave manufacturers a timetable for having certain medium-voltage equipment listed.
Household appliances ranging from toasters to hair dryers are routinely listed, but high-voltage equipment historically has been tested by manufacturers who “self-certify” it as safe.
“Fortunately, there is no massive data base of ongoing electrical accidents with (this) equipment,” General Electric wrote in a letter to the city opposing the high-voltage policy. “Fortunate, because they are rare. . . . It appears to us that (testing) will cause severe schedule disruptions and needless expense in the absence of demonstrated need.”
The policy has created concern in the $1.1-billion medium-voltage equipment industry because once one manufacturer gets his equipment listed, federal worker safety laws make it illegal to use unlisted equipment in the workplace.
The policy has also made a pariah of one small manufacturer from Montebello who complied with its strictest provision.
“My transformers were red-tagged by the city,” said R. Ben Ezra, president of International Transformer Corp. of Montebello, who said he spent $200,000 to have his products listed by Underwriters Laboratory, a nonprofit testing agency, and is now using his UL label as an advertising aid.
“But I’m a convert. Requiring listings for toasters and not for medium-voltage transformers is like saying you need a license to drive a bicycle but not a semi-truck.”
