AFTERMATH OF THE FIRES : Paper Recycling Operation May be Ordered Indoors

Residents and city officials have expressed concern over the Allan Co.’s plans to resume paper recycling after the firestorm last week that began at the company’s plant and spread to a nearby neighborhood, destroying 14 homes.

The recycling company, which sustained $1 million in damage and inventory losses during the Dec. 8 fire, reopened its aluminum recycling center this week and hopes to resume its wastepaper operations within a month, said Jim Pearson, secretary and controller for the firm.

Not so fast, say city officials, who said this week that the company might be in violation of the Municipal Code by continuing to conduct its paper recycling outdoors. Before granting the firm a permit to reopen, the Planning Commission may require Allan Co. to build a structure to house its recycling operation.

Safety Demanded

“This will be a safe operation or no operation,” Mayor Leo King said.

County fire inspectors believe last Thursday’s fire began when strong winds caused power lines to arc, sending sparks and molten metal onto stacks of paper in the Allan Co. yard, said Assistant Fire Chief Harold McCann.

In an interview that took place before the city informed Allan Co. that it may have to move its recycling operation indoors, Pearson stressed that the company should not be made a scapegoat for a natural disaster such as the wind-driven firestorm.

“You had a fire disaster here, OK?” Pearson said. “You had extenuating circumstances. You had 90- to 100-m.p.h. winds. . . . We feel very badly about losses that happened to anyone. We also suffered a loss here ourselves.”

In response to officials’ concerns, Pearson defended the company’s safety record, noting that the only previous fire in the plant’s 25-year history was a smaller 1976 blaze caused by downed power lines.

The remains of the company’s paper recycling plant were inspected on Tuesday by Baldwin Park code enforcement officers and inspectors from the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s fire prevention detail.

‘Tentative Conclusions’

After reviewing the findings of the inspection and discussing the Municipal Code with City Atty. Robert Flandrick, city officials reached several “tentative conclusions,” said Dick Smith, the city’s director of community services.

Officials decided that before Allan Co. may resume operations, it must receive a modification to its conditional-use permit, which it received from the city in 1966, Smith said.

The existing permit allows the firm to recycle paper but has no provision for glass or aluminum recycling, which the company also conducts at its plant on Arrow Highway, he said.

Most important, Smith said, the permit was issued before the Municipal Code was revised to require all manufacturing operations--including recycling--to be conducted indoors.

“Based on the current code, we would not allow that type of operation unless it were conducted inside a building,” Smith said.

Meeting Planned

Allan Co. officials were to be informed of the city’s decision at a meeting Wednesday afternoon. Told of the city’s intent early Wednesday afternoon, Pearson said the firm would have no comment until meeting with city officials. In an interview on Tuesday, Pearson said Allan Co. has always sought to conduct its recycling operations safely and within the restrictions of the Municipal Code.

“We abide by all the city ordinances,” Pearson said. “We make our wastepaper plant as safe as is humanly possible. . . . Naturally, we will cooperate with the city of Baldwin Park as we’ve done in the past. . . . We’ve been here a long time. It’s not like we run a shady operation.”

Residents of California Avenue, the residential street closest to the Allan Co. facility, said they believe the storage of 3,000 tons of paper outdoors poses a danger to their homes. During the firestorm, they said, flaming paper debris from the recycling plant rained down on their neighborhood.

Harold Thompson, whose home escaped serious damage while five nearby structures burned to the ground, said scraps of paper from the plant have been a persistent problem.

“Every time we get a wind from the north, my yard is full of papers,” Thompson said. “I don’t think they should open again.”

However, Pearson said the company does everything it can to contain the problem of loose paper, including regularly assigning employees to police the plant’s grounds for stray scraps.

Others Blamed

“A lot of the loose paper we try to secure,” Pearson said, though he added that part of the litter problem was beyond the company’s control. “If you’ve got a recycling center, you’ve got a lot of people who might spill some paper on their way here.”

Mayor King said he had received complaints from residents about stray paper at the Allan Co. in 1986, but said he hadn’t heard any thing more about the problem since then and believed it had been resolved.

Smith said code enforcement officers had contacted company officials about the problem then and that it was satisfactorily corrected.

“To the best of my knowledge, other than some minor problems in the past with litter in the adjacent areas, I believe their record is fairly clean,” Smith said.

McCann said fire investigators who inspected the Allan Co. last week found nothing unsafe about the way paper had been stored at the facility. Safeguards such as a high-powered sprinkler system could reduce the risk of fire, McCann said, but he doubted such measures could have prevented last week’s blaze.

“In this particular fire, I don’t think any of it could have done a damned thing,” McCann said. “The (hoses) that we put into place that evening were ineffective. The water just kept blowing back. . . . his (firestorm) was practically an act of God.”

Expense Questioned

McCann said that housing the paper recycling operation in a building would provide an extra measure of protection, but questioned whether the expense might be too great.

“You could put it in a concrete building and put a sprinkler system over it, but it would probably make the operation unfeasible economically,” McCann said. “I don’t know for sure, though. I’m not in that business.”

King acknowledged that Allan Co.’s presence has been largely positive in its 25 years in Baldwin Park. But in light of last week’s fire, he said, the city must take a fresh look at the firm’s operations.

“We have to make sure this paper is contained,” King said, adding that officials may even question the plant’s continued existence at its current site. “Is this the right location for this because of the direction of the prevailing wind? I think that will be something we’ll have to look at.”

Eli Roca, a California Avenue resident who is trying to organize his neighbors to seek more stringent safeguards at the plant, said many residents are angry at the recycler.

“Our concern is that it may happen again,” Roca said. “The whole block wants to say, ‘Let’s go get ‘em, run ‘em out of town,’ the whole tar-and-feather thing. That’s a natural response. (But) I want to see if we can work toward a compromise.”

Modified Operation

After getting a sense of his neighbors’ feelings on the matter, Roca said he wants to meet with a representative of the recycling company to suggest modifications to keep bales of paper out of the weather and away from the neighborhood.

“We’d like to get them to build some kind of enclosure, so that at night everything is enclosed and not one scrap of paper can escape,” Roca said. “I’m sure it’ll be costly to do something like that, but we need it to feel safe.”

While residents would like to reach a mutually satisfactory compromise, Roca said they will become more aggressive in pressing their concerns if necessary.

“If (Allan Co. officials) get obnoxious and flat out close the doors of compromise, we’d be at a point where we’d have to get tough and (ask the city to) either close them down or minimize their operation,” Roca said.

McCann, however, said residents can never be guaranteed of total protection against fire.

“To make anything perfectly safe is impossible,” McCann said. “There are inherent sources of ignition in that situation. Paper intrinsically burns very easily. You can mitigate it to a degree with a high-performance sprinkler system, but you can’t eliminate it.”

And Pearson said Allan Co. is already doing all it can to ensure safety, but that incidents such as last week’s fire are beyond human control.

“Naturally, you feel bad about your neighbors and your friends who suffered losses,” Pearson said. “But Allan Co. was a victim also.”