Plan to Put Sprinklers in Old Condos Draws Heat

Dressed in well-tailored slacks and an open-throat sports shirt that could have come off the rack at Brooks Brothers, Glenn Rosten hardly looks the part of a daredevil.

But the Los Angeles Fire Department says Rosten and other residents of 100 or more older high-rise residential buildings scattered around the city need more protection from danger in their homes--whether they want it or not.

Department officials have been trying for 18 months to persuade the city to require the installation of sprinklers in these older buildings, a number of which are in the well-to-do Wilshire corridor near Westwood. Their appeals reached a crescendo last week, after a $25-million series of fires that damaged an unsprinklered high-rise building only four blocks east on Wilshire Boulevard from Rosten’s 17th-floor apartment in Crown Towers.

Miraculously, no one died in the Dec. 23 blaze at the Wilshire Terrace condominium. But Fire Chief Donald O. Manning complained publicly on Thursday about the delay in passing the sprinkler ordinance, releasing a letter to the City Council that said “it would be hard to conceal my disappointment” over the failure to act.

Rosten, whose apartment looks out over the shimmering Westwood skyline, is a past president of the Greater Los Angeles Condominium Assn. And he is among the leaders of the fight against mandatory sprinkler installation.

The 43-year-old Rosten does not like to think he is courting danger. But he resents what he perceives as the paternalism of the city. He plans to appear Monday before a City Council committee to attempt to stop what he fears is a developing juggernaut in favor of mandatory sprinklers, spurred by the recent fire and Manning’s remarks.

“Big Brother is saying to us, ‘We’re going to protect your lives for you.’ I’m the guy who would die,” he said. “To me, the idea of somebody else telling me what’s good for me, and telling me to pay for it, I find that un-American.”

The odds of a fire in his high-rise are remote, Rosten insisted. He said he is willing to live with a little danger, especially considering the high cost of that additional measure of safety the Fire Department wants him to have. Installation of sprinklers could amount to a bill of about $50,000 per condominium owner, he said.

The Fire Department disputes his figures, claiming that some condominium association leaders are misleading their membership.

Some critics also have characterized the condominium owners as a small group of wealthy Westsiders who could certainly afford the extra protection.

And other critics charge that the owners have used their influence at City Hall to keep the City Council at bay.

Rosten bristles when he hears this, saying that some condominium owners are elderly women on fixed incomes.

“We have people who simply cannot afford it,” he said of the sprinkler installation.

The issue has not only raised temperatures at the Fire Department and among the condominium and apartment owners, who also would be required to add sprinklers in their buildings, but also at City Hall.

Aide Bonnie Rath said the controversy has been among the most difficult in Councilman Richard Alatorre’s four-year council career. Alatorre is chairman of the Public Safety Committee, which has been struggling to write an ordinance that would achieve the elusive goal of satisfying all sides.

“This is almost a no-win situation,” Rath said.

The proposal scheduled to come before the committee, made up of three council members including Alatorre, requires sprinklers. But it would allow an exemption for buildings with high concentrations of carcinogenic asbestos insulation in the walls, which can complicate sprinkler installation.

The presence of the asbestos can require workmen to use extra care not to disturb it. If it is disturbed, they must make sure that any asbestos released into the air is cleaned up before it can be inhaled.

This proposal seems to satisfy nobody. The Fire Department says it has too many loopholes and Rosten says it gives too much power to the Fire Department.

The debate over sprinklers in older buildings began after the May 4, 1988, fire at the First Interstate Bank tower downtown, which had no sprinklers. Since 1974, any building higher than 75 feet has been required to have sprinklers, but after the First Interstate fire, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring the owners of 350 older commercial and industrial structures to install sprinklers in their buildings. The council also began talking about doing the same for older high-rise residential buildings.

Rosten said an ordinance mandating sprinklers was sailing through the council when his organization of 26 condominium buildings (12 of the buildings would fall under the ordinance) heard about it and joined the debate.

Since then, negotiations on a compromise proposal have dragged on.

A spokeswoman said the city attorney’s office has drafted so many proposals that she has lost count.

At the heart of the controversy is the cost of installing sprinkler systems in buildings that were constructed decades ago, in the case of Crown Towers, 1963. Rosten said he received an estimate of $6.1 million to install a system in his 22-story building, which would be about $51,000 for each of the 119 units.

The reason the cost is so high, he said, is that the presence of asbestos as insulation in the ceilings and walls complicates any construction.

Asbestos was once commonly used as an insulating material because it does not burn easily. But in recent years, doctors have shown that breathing airborne particles of asbestos can cause serious health problems, including cancer.

Rosten said that while the sprinkler installation was going on, residents would be forced to move out. Some cannot afford to do that, he said.

“Some people are very wealthy,” he admitted, “but 25% of the people in this building are single women over 65.”

But Craig Drummond, a deputy fire chief, charged Thursday that the condominium associations “have escalated the costs inappropriately.” He said the Marriott hotel chain accomplished the installation of sprinklers in their hotels nationwide without even closing up a room.

“People don’t need to move out. They’ve been misled,” Drummond said.

As a case study of what can happen when there are no sprinklers, Drummond pointed to the recent fire at the Wilshire Terrace. The blaze began in a construction site next door, but spread to the luxury condominium. Film director Billy Wilder and actress Greer Garson have residences there.

Before the fire was doused, 12 of the 14 floors were involved on the east side of the building and 22 units were damaged.

Drummond said residents of the Wilshire Terrace had been among the most concerned about fire safety. A representative of the building manager, George Elkins Co., said the membership met the day after the First Interstate blaze to consider installing sprinklers. But they never took any action. Nineteen months later, their own building was in flames.

Drummond argued that if the building had had sprinklers, only one-tenth of the damage it finally sustained would have occurred.

But Rosten and other condominium owners are not convinced. Rosten said the compartmentalized construction of a residential building, with many interior walls, keeps fire from spreading as fast as in a commercial building, giving residents time to escape.

Charles Preston, another Crown Towers resident, said the condominium owners met just after the Wilshire Terrace fire and talked about giving the building staff added training and about appointing captains for each floor to alert others when an emergency strikes.

Nobody seriously considered sprinklers, he said.

“It would be less expensive to hire a fireman to stand outside the building full time and wait for a fire to start and then put it out,” Rosten said.