Fire at Hall of Justice Forces the Evacuation of 1,800 Jail Inmates

Fire erupted Tuesday in a narcotics storage area on the seventh floor of the Los Angeles County Hall of Justice, briefly forcing the evacuation of 1,800 inmates held in the downtown building’s upper-floor jail.

Sparks from a welder’s torch being used to cap a steam pipe in the ceiling touched off the blaze, which two sheriff’s deputies vainly tried to extinguish with a fire hose, officials said. The building is not equipped with a sprinkler system.

The room contained mostly confiscated cocaine--highly flammable because of the acetone and kerosene used to dilute the drug, Sheriff Sherman Block said.

Paramedics treated and released 46 people--24 firefighters, 20 deputies and two civilians, including a high-security prisoner, Los Angeles city fire officials said. Two other deputies were treated at White Memorial Hospital for minor smoke inhalation and released.

Damage, mostly from smoke and water, was estimated at $10,000.

The fire was reported at 10:25 a.m. in the 63-year-old, 15-story building on Temple Street and was put out at 11:11 a.m., officials said.

Origin of Fire

The blaze started in the 20-by-30-foot storage area, which contains evidentiary documents and narcotics--mostly cocaine and marijuana--seized in Sheriff’s Department investigations. Block put no dollar amount on the narcotics, but added that the loss would not hurt prosecutions, because chemical samplings had already been taken.

“It wasn’t our entire stash, as they would say,” the sheriff said.

More than 120 firefighters from 30 engine companies and two helicopters battled the blaze, fire officials said.

The building was not fitted with a sprinkler system. The county is exempt from city laws requiring sprinklers in high-rises, authorities explained.

“A sprinkler system would have probably taken care of the whole situation (immediately),” Fire Department spokesman Vince Marzo said. “It would have contained it immediately.”

Marzo said firefighters had trouble communicating with one another because of outmoded radio equipment that would not function through the concrete walls of the building, a problem that plagued crews during the First Interstate Bank fire in May.

The evacuation of the more than 2,000 prisoners and sheriff’s employees in the building was ordered after smoke quickly filled much of the upper floors, which house the sheriff’s headquarters behind an Italian Renaissance facade of gray California granite.

The descent from the top floors was difficult for some.

“I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” said Mary Caserez, who works in the clinic on the 14th floor.

The prisoners, who are housed in the upper six floors, were ushered downstairs and, through an underground tunnel, into the county Criminal Courts building on the other side of Temple Street. Some of them shouted sardonic chants of delight. Security buses transferred the prisoners to the county’s Men’s Central Jail near Union Station. They were returned by late afternoon.

At the height of the blaze, thick black smoke was visible about 50 feet above the top of the building.

Traffic near Temple between Spring Street and Broadway, which includes City Hall, the Criminal Courts building and the U.S. District Courthouse, was congested by gawking motorists, and hundreds of curious onlookers were held back by police.

Firefighters carried their gear up the building’s stairs to the seventh floor.

“It was like being in an oven,” said one, Larry Hoerner, his face covered with soot. “There was a fair amount of fire.”

By late afternoon, some employees had returned to work as firefighters were mopping up. The deafening rumble of the gas-powered fans filled the blackened hall on the seventh floor. A single flood light filled the room with eerie shadows, and soot ran down the walls like splattered paint.

The price tag for installing sprinklers and adopting other safety measures in the county’s 23 high-rise buildings would cost as much as $85.3 million, according to a recently completed financial report, said Mary Jung, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer.

Cost of installing the safety equipment in the Hall of Justice alone was estimated at $4.3 million. A financial study on how the county can pay for all the expenditures is under way.

The city ordinance--adopted in wake of the devastating First Interstate Bank fire, which left one man dead and 40 injured--requires all existing office buildings of more than 75 feet in height to install fire-sprinkler systems within three years.

High-rise buildings constructed since 1974 are already required to have sprinkler systems.

County officials said there is no automatic safety review for aging buildings like the Hall of Justice. However, Tom Schriber, a division chief for the county Department of Facilities Management, said such buildings are examined when improvements are made. The Hall of Justice is slated for an examination, because the county is in the process of putting new elevators into the building.

The Hall of Justice, which was the main center for criminal justice in Los Angeles until the Criminal Courts Building was opened in 1973, suffered some minor structural damage after the Oct. 1, 1987, earthquake, Schriber said.

Block expressed confidence Tuesday in the old building’s safety.

“If I had my choice when the big one (earthquake) comes, I’d rather be in this one than one of the new ones (buildings),” he said.

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this article.