4 Still Hospitalized as Probers Seek Clues in Hollywood Blaze

Two children and two adults remained hospitalized Thursday as investigators sought to determine the cause of a fire that erupted in a Hollywood high-rise building and briefly trapped about 30 people--some of them on the roof.

By 8 a.m. Thursday, more than 10 hours after flames swept the ninth floor of the 14-story Cahuenga Sunset Building, employees were allowed to re-enter two radio stations, the Los Angeles bureau of Cable News Network and numerous entertainment industry offices.

Damage was estimated at $250,000 and was confined by 150 firefighters to the floor where the blaze originated, said Los Angeles city fire spokesman Jim Williamson.

Arson and insurance investigators were probing the charred ninth floor. But they had yet to pinpoint the origin of the fire.

Radio stations KIQQ-FM 100.3 and KJOI-FM 99 had to go off the air, but resumed broadcasting during the night.

By Thursday morning, the CNN bureau was able to feed programming--including “Sonya Live in L.A.”--to its Atlanta headquarters.

Paramedics treated 17 people at the scene of the fire, which broke out shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday. Eight of them were taken to hospitals, most suffering smoke inhalation.

One man, Chandler Haynie, 23, was cut by falling shards of window glass as he ran from the smoke-filled building at 6430 Sunset Blvd. He was reported in fair condition Thursday at Kaiser Permanente in Hollywood.

At the same hospital, reportedly in good condition after treatment for smoke inhalation, was Juan Chavarin, 38, an officer of United Broadcasting Corp.

Two other smoke inhalation victims, Jorge Rodriguez, 8, and his brother, Duvan, 6, were in stable condition at Childrens Hospital. Their mother, Norma Rodriguez, 24, was released Thursday morning from Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

They are the wife and sons of Arturo Rodriguez, president of United, who were trapped with Chavarin in Rodriguez’s ninth floor office when the fire broke out. Rodriguez was separated from them when he went to a stairway to get a fire extinguisher and was locked out of the floor.

It was not until firefighters got ninth floor tenants out of the building that they could turn their attention to eight people stranded on the roof. Plans to evacuate them by helicopter were abandoned, said Fire Department spokesman Gary Svider, because “we were told the building’s structure couldn’t support a helicopter.”

About 10:15 p.m., a helicopter swooped in close so that half a dozen firefighters could lower themselves to the roof on ropes and, Svider said, “keep the people . . . calm and deal immediately with any injuries.”

On Thursday, city Fire Marshal Craig G. Drummond said that, although the building has no fire sprinkler system because it was built in 1969, five years before the city sprinkler ordinance took effect, the structure’s owners will be required to install sprinklers under the new retrofitting law.

About a month ago, fire inspectors started citing buildings that need retrofitting, Drummond said. They have cited about 20 of the tallest structures in the city so far, he said, and others--including the Cahuenga Sunset Building--are expected to be cited within the next seven to eight months.

After that, owners will have a year to submit plans to the Department of Building and Safety. They will have one more year to begin work.

Lisa Stockdale, secretary to the president of Copperfield Investment & Development Co., which has owned the Cahuenga Sunset Building since 1983, said the firm is in the process of getting bids to install a sprinkler system.

She said the company has been working on it “ever since the First Interstate fire, when we first became aware of it. It’s not an overnight process.”

The 62-story First Interstate Bank tower in downtown Los Angeles was hit by a major fire last May 4, stirring intense concern over the lack of sprinklers in pre-1974 buildings in the city.

Stockdale pointed out that the Cahuenga Sunset Building already has smoke detectors and fire alarms.

Pat Mulligan, president of Baker Pacific Corp., which had 22 workers removing asbestos from ceilings on the second and 14th floors when the fire broke out Wednesday night, said one of his men pulled the alarm.

There were initial concerns that asbestos fibers posed a threat to firefighters and occupants during the fire. In a small area of the ninth floor, firefighters encountered pieces of the cancer-causing material falling from the ceiling. Firefighters were ordered to decontaminate their suits.

Air pumps and asbestos meters were placed on the fire-blackened ninth floor Thursday morning, but investigators said it did not appear there was a health problem.

KJOI was off the air for about 90 minutes, but was able to resume broadcasting about 11 p.m. by using a transmitter above Beverly Hills, where operations manager Allan Hotlen said some recordings and tapes are kept for emergencies.

“Our music was a little different,” he conceded, “but it was still easy listening.”

KIQQ officials could not be reached.

By noon Thursday, the station staff was working out of its studio again.

A ninth floor tenant, Bonneville Satellite Communications, which sends television signals for various broadcasters, had minor disruptions because of the fire.

A television station in Philadelphia, for instance, was not able to conduct post-game interviews after the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood.

Bonneville was able to use other transmitters for CNN and for the Hospital Satellite Network, a building tenant that provides telecasts for 1,300 hospitals around the country.

CNN’s only loss was a scheduled live interview about the Pan American Airways bomb explosion crash with the RAND Corp.’s terrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, for “NewsNight Update.” CNN sent a taxi to Hoffman’s West Los Angeles home, but when the cab driver pulled up, he asked Hoffman, “Are you sure you want to go? There’s a fire.”

Hoffman didn’t.

Times staff writer Stephen Braun contributed to this story.