Officials to Push Construction Site Fence Ordinance : Discovery of More Dangerous Holes Triggers Call for Strict Safety Rules

The discovery of additional open construction shafts in the neighborhood where a Woodland Hills man was trapped in a 30-foot-deep hole has prompted Los Angeles officials to hurry efforts to beef up security around building sites.

Administrators of the city’s Department of Building and Safety said they will ask the City Council to amend the building code to require developers to fence in construction areas that contain holes deeper than three feet.

The move came as city inspectors discovered dozens of deep “caisson” shafts--some only partially covered by loose plywood--at a hilly construction site in the 4200 block of Canoga Avenue last week.

The holes are being drilled into bedrock to hold steel beams that will support two luxury homes planned for the hillside site a mile south of the Ventura Freeway.

The construction site is several hundred yards from an Ensenada Drive lot where 22-year-old Ronald Costello slipped into the 30-foot hole two weeks ago. He was trapped in the 20-inch-wide shaft for 40 minutes until he was rescued by Los Angeles firefighters.

Next Door to Site

Costello, who lives next door to the construction site, slid feet-first into the hole shortly after nightfall while showing his aunt the wreckage of a drill that had earlier tumbled down the hill and ripped out electrical and telephone lines to the house they share.

After Costello’s close call, building and safety officials discovered that 23 holes had been drilled on the site to hold supports for a planned 4,000-square-foot home.

But when they were unable to locate the Ensenada Drive developers, officials took the unprecedented step of posting a 24-hour guard at the site to keep away other onlookers until the holes could either be securely covered or the lot could be fenced. After five days, the developers, identified by officials as Allan Villard, Berry Silva and Serafin Hezedia, were located. They erected a fence, and the guards were withdrawn.

Building and safety officials in Van Nuys say the developer of the Canoga Avenue lot was located within a day after inspectors visited the unoccupied construction area Tuesday.

After observing that some plywood covers were loose and others were broken, the inspectors ordered further digging halted until the holes were properly covered. The developer, identified by officials as Nicolette Schwartz, promised to comply immediately, said Michael D. Tharpe, a principal city inspector.

More Protection

Building and safety administrators say the unguarded shafts underscore the need for additional protection at construction sites.

“We’re working on an ordinance that would require some form of fencing,” said Warren V. O’Brien, the department’s executive officer. “Whether we can get the support of the council, I don’t know.”

A spokeswoman for Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the Woodland Hills area, said he “will definitely support” such a law.

The city’s current hole-covering requirement is about 30 years old. It was added to the building code after the 1949 death of Kathy Fiscus, a 3 1/2-year-old who fell into an abandoned well in San Marino.

The city lets builders decide how they want to secure trenches, shafts or construction pits. The most common method is to cover narrow holes with plywood weighted down with a small amount of dirt or sandbags.

“But plywood, sandbags--kids can move them. We think the best way is fenced,” said O’Brien, who could not predict when council members will be asked to amend the code.

Fencing Proposal

Homeowners who live in the neighborhood where the shafts were discovered lauded the fencing proposal. But they also called for more rigorous inspections of building sites by the city, warning that numerous other hillside construction sites have similar caisson shafts.

“There are children out there. We could have another Jessica on our hands here,” said Lori Davis, referring to Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old Texas girl who was rescued from a well shaft in 1987.

Davis, who lives halfway between the two open shaft sites, charged that city officials had ignored neighborhood complaints about safety problems at the Canoga Avenue site over the past six weeks.

“They had these humongous holes and wouldn’t cover them. I called building and safety, and they came out and we told them this is a slide area,” Davis said. “But building and safety wouldn’t do anything.”

However, there is no record of anyone calling the city to complain about problems at the Canoga Avenue construction site, said William King, a chief inspector at the Department of Building and Safety’s San Fernando Valley office in Van Nuys.

Rely on the Public

King said the Valley’s building inspectors rely on the public to report safety problems in buildings and at construction sites. He said the Van Nuys office receives about 300 tips a year, including some that are made anonymously.

“With 42 inspectors for the 200-square-mile Valley area, we don’t have time to patrol,” King said.

The inspectors review about 45,000 permits of various kinds each year in the Valley. For a single-family house under construction, the inspectors will make between seven and 12 trips to the project site during a typical eight-month building period, he said.

But the first on-site inspection usually does not occur until excavations are filled in with freshly poured concrete foundation footings or when shafts are filled with partially completed steel caisson support systems, King said.

Other inspections occur at intervals as inspectors check slabs, framing, rough electrical wiring and plumbing, insulation and drywall installation. A final inspection is done for the completed structure.

City officials say inspectors are not required to visit construction sites until holes are being filled with foundation material.

Expansive Soil

Construction plans are drawn up by state-licensed architects and civil engineers who base their designs on studies made by similarly certified geologists and soils engineers. Those experts decide how deep hillside caissons must extend to reach bedrock and how thick foundations must be to handle some areas’ expansive adobe soil.

Building and safety plan checkers review them before issuing construction permits. Besides watching to make certain that the plans meet city building standards, the checkers also examine them to determine whether the proposed project meets neighborhood zoning and development restrictions, officials said.

In the Valley, there are about 70 localized restrictions and moratoriums that have been enacted by the City Council, said Robert Ayers, manager of the department’s Van Nuys office. They range from building height limitations along Ventura Boulevard to minimum lot sizes in certain sections of Woodland Hills.

“Each moratorium has different requirements, and they’re all complex to begin with,” Ayers said. “It becomes a challenge.”