Memory of L.A. Fires Aids Drive for Sprinklers in South Bay High-Rises

At least 18 tall buildings in the South Bay lack sprinklers, including three hospitals and a senior citizens complex, but concern about high-rise fires is helping officials get them installed.

Since the fires in May at the First Interstate Bank and Union Bank high-rises in downtown Los Angeles, “we have been in a better position to negotiate with (building owners) because of the concern and the publicity,” said Fire Chief Robert Marsh in El Segundo, where four high-rises lack sprinklers. “It’s sort of a tragic benefit.”

Three South Bay hospitals lack sprinklers--Gardena Memorial Hospital, the west wing of Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance. As a result of the fires downtown, hospital and county officials are studying the costs of installing sprinklers.

“This is how you get ordinances passed. We use disasters for our benefit,” said Torrance Fire Marshal Denny Haas. After a fire in 1980 gutted much of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and killed 85 people, he said, Torrance passed a law requiring sprinklers in all buildings 40 feet or taller built after 1982.

Now the Torrance Fire Department is trying to find federal money to install sprinklers at a senior citizens high-rise, Haas said.

Since the downtown fires, Los Angeles has passed a new sprinkler law, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering adopting a sprinkler law for county-owned buildings.

But while South Bay fire officials agree that sprinklers are the best weapon in fighting high-rise fires, many say they do not want to push for more sprinkler laws.

Such laws, they say, provide little flexibility for the building owner, whereas voluntary cooperation makes it easier to negotiate the type of fire safety system to install and the period allowed for installing it.

The officials also worry that unrealistic deadlines may force building owners to pass on the cost of installing sprinklers to tenants in the form of higher rents. Some owners, they say, may simply sell or tear down the buildings, leaving people homeless.

All cities must abide by a 1974 state law that requires sprinklers in high-rises built after that year. A high-rise is defined as a building more than 75 feet tall (about seven stories). Over the years, many cities in the South Bay have enacted more restrictive laws.

The new Los Angeles ordinance requires the owners of about 350 older high-rise commercial and industrial buildings to install sprinkler systems within two years.

In the South Bay, this law will affect the 12-story Pacific Trade Center and the seven-story City Hall branch office in San Pedro. In the Los Angeles International Airport area, it will force two private high-rise office buildings and the airport’s Theme Restaurant to install sprinklers.

El Segundo has 24 high-rise buildings, the most in the South Bay. Four lack sprinklers. Last year, the city passed a law that called for sprinklers in all high-rise buildings built before 1974. The four building owners were given nine years to comply. But, partly because of pressure from concerned citizens and fire officials since the downtown fires, Marsh said, the owners will probably comply much sooner.

“It was a struggle to get the law,” said Marsh, who met with building owners several times over a four-month period to hammer out the ordinance.

In Inglewood, fire officials and citizens aroused by the Los Angeles fires have pressed the city to examine fire safety precautions for four high-rise buildings that lack sprinklers, including the 9-story City Hall and the 10-story Airport Park Hotel. But Inglewood has no plans to pass a sprinkler law affecting those buildings, said Fire Marshal Larry Mann.

“The people who call me are people concerned because they work in a building and they are not sure if their building is sprinkled,” Mann said.

The Inglewood budget this year includes $160,000 for an electronic smoke detection system for City Hall, said City Manager Paul Eckles. Installing a sprinkler system, which could cost $500,000, is still under consideration.

During a recent City Council meeting, an angry resident accused the council of irresponsibly spending city money that he said should have been spent on sprinklers for City Hall.

“Are there any sprinklers in this building?” the man asked. “I don’t see any. Why don’t we spend some money on getting sprinklers put in? What would happen if a fire broke out right now?”

In Torrance, which has two high-rise buildings without sprinklers, fire officials are working with building owners to get sprinklers installed in the 14-story Golden West Tower, a senior citizens residential complex at 3510 Maricopa St.

The complex, which houses 198 people, would cost about $500,000 to retrofit. The building is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and rents are subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It is unlikely that the owners will be able to afford sprinklers, and it is still uncertain whether HUD will offer to help, said David Honigberg, a spokesman for the building’s management company, Faulkenberg, Gilliam & Associates.

Fire Marshal Haas said the city is trying to find federal funding to help pay for the work, so far unsuccessfully.

The owners would like to install sprinklers, Honigberg said, “but when you are talking about a figure of half a million dollars, you are going to need an owner with a pretty deep pocket” to afford it.

Since the downtown Los Angeles fires, Honigberg said, some residents “have asked us questions about the building’s safety at our meetings, and we stress the safety precautions the building has.” He said the building, which has smoke detectors in every apartment and common area and fire alarms on every floor, is “reasonably safe.”

Meanwhile, the owners of the Union Bank building, the other Torrance high-rise without sprinklers, are obtaining cost estimates for a sprinkler system, Haas said.

As for the three South Bay hospitals that lack sprinklers, some fire officials say they are relatively safe because of preventive measures such as smoke detectors, fire-resistant walls and evacuation plans.

The largest of the three, the 8-story Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, has all the fire safety equipment required by the county and is monitored 24 hours a day, said Los Angeles County Fire Marshal James Daleo. Although the building has no sprinklers, he said, it was built in compartments so that it would be difficult for fire to spread quickly.

Cost Studied

While the County Board of Supervisors considers whether to enact a sprinkler law for unincorporated areas, which would include the hospital, the cost of putting sprinklers in the hospital is being studied, Daleo said.

“I feel very safe,” said Tony DiGiampaolo, director of mechanical services for the hospital. The 553-bed hospital has monthly staff fire drills to practice evacuation of patients, he said. The county Fire Department also has regular practice drills at the hospital.

“Each one of us has a job to do” in the event of a fire, DiGiampaolo said. “We do more than most cities do.”

Others disagree.

“If that fire (in the Union Bank Building) in L.A. were a high-rise hospital, there would be hundreds of deaths,” said Gardena Administrative Battalion Chief Ralph Mailloux. Evacuating hundreds of bed-ridden patients would be very difficult during a major fire, he said.

The cost of installing sprinklers in high-rise buildings--as much as $18 a square foot if asbestos has to be removed--makes most building owners reluctant to comply voluntarily, said Jim Greedy, president of Advance Fire Protection of La Habra. If no asbestos is found, the cost is $4 to $6 a square foot.

Asbestos, which was used as a fire-resistant coating for support beams in walls and ceilings, was found in 1973 to cause cancer, and its use in buildings was prohibited.

Although it is not against the law to leave asbestos in a building, the asbestos usually must be removed before sprinkler systems are fitted to support beams. Otherwise it could break off and be inhaled by workers or occupants, Greedy said.

According to Greedy, about 90% of the buildings that lack sprinklers contain some asbestos in walls and ceilings.

The costs of installing sprinklers also is high because many older buildings, such as the Golden Tower Apartments, have concrete walls and ceilings, Greedy said. Holes for pipes and sprinkler heads must be drilled into the ceiling and covered with paneling or other materials for aesthetic reasons, he said.

Retrofitting also means that tenants will have to be moved out during the work, Honigberg said. “You can’t very well come in and use a high-powered drill with some 89-year-old lady sitting there.”

Because of the high costs, Greedy said, his company has seen no increase in business since the downtown fires. Only the bigger sprinkler installation companies have had a slight increase in business, he said.

While everyone interviewed agreed that sprinkler systems can save lives, getting a sprinkler law enacted can be very difficult.

To win passage of the El Segundo sprinkler law last year, Fire Chief Marsh had to meet at least five times with building owners to work out an ordinance agreeable to everyone.

When Marsh first proposed at a City Council meeting that all high-rise buildings without sprinklers be retrofitted, building owners complained that they could not afford it.

The council suggested that Marsh meet with the building owners and negotiate.

Marsh suggested two options: Install sprinklers only in halls and common living areas within three years, or completely retrofit the buildings within nine years. The building owners chose the latter.

Then the owners wanted to do the installation at their own pace, but Marsh argued that they should have one-third of the retrofitting completed within three years. The owners conceded, and the city council unanimously passed the ordinance in the fall of 1987.

“If I had the (downtown fires) behind me, I don’t think I would have to have gone through that,” he said.

But even more difficult than passing laws, he said, is actually fighting high-rise fires.

In such cases, teams of firefighters, carrying hoses and other equipment, are sent up every stairwell in the building, Marsh said. If one team is blocked by smoke or fire, he explained, the others can usually keep moving.

Because of the weight of their equipment, it takes firefighters about 10 minutes to climb one flight of stairs, Marsh said.

Tallest Ladders

In addition, firefighters attack a high-rise fire from the ladders of fire trucks. The tallest ladders in the South Bay--at the Inglewood and Torrance fire stations--are 100 feet tall and can reach the top of a 7-story building.

High-rise fires require many more firefighters than other blazes, officials said, and no South Bay city has the resources and personnel to fight a major one without the aid of neighboring cities.

It took about 300 city and county firefighters to control the First Interstate Bank fire and 120 for the Union Bank fire.

“With a small department like ours, we would be overwhelmed by a fire like that,” said Marsh, whose El Segundo department normally has about 18 men on duty.

All South Bay fire departments have some type of mutual assistance agreement, either with neighboring cities or with the county or Los Angeles departments.

“We could get an unlimited amount of assistance,” said Torrance Fire Chief R. Scott Adams, “but the crucial factor is time.”