Quake-Hazard Buildings Targeted : Safety: Communities have listed structures most at risk in temblors. But owners are worrying about finding the funds to make improvements.

City building inspector Brent Miller has driven through Huntington Park’s shopping district hundreds of times, never noticing the danger.

It was not until he started compiling a list of unreinforced masonry buildings for the state Seismic Safety Commission that he realized many of the businesses in the bustling downtown area are “time bombs waiting to explode.”

Freshly painted or stuccoed buildings that look new from the street reveal a drastically different picture when inspected from the back alleys. Building after building along Pacific Boulevard is constructed of brick held together by 60-year-old mortar.

“The bomb is ticking right now,” Miller said to a visitor recently as he pointed out a crack zigzagging up the back wall of a popular clothing store. “All it needs is the right combination of explosives: A 5.0 or greater earthquake and a busy shopping day.”

Huntington Park has 120 unreinforced masonry buildings, more than any other city in the area except Long Beach. The city of 50,000, founded in the early 1920s, has been lucky, somehow escaping serious damage in past temblors. But who knows when its luck will run out.

The state Seismic Safety Commission does not want to take any more chances. On Jan. 1, all cities in California were required under a 1986 state law to submit a list of unreinforced commercial and residential dwellings with more than four units. Communities also were required to prepare an ordinance that would make buildings less dangerous in an earthquake.

All Southeast-Long Beach area cities, except for Bell, which claims it does not have the staff to identify the hazardous buildings, complied with the state law. Nearly 1,000 unreinforced masonry building were identified, 650 of them in Long Beach alone.

Many cities in the area are refining their earthquake safety ordinances and searching for ways to help building owners make costly improvements on the hazardous structures, identified as the kind most likely to crumble in a temblor.

During an earthquake, the mortar in an unreinforced masonry building turns to dust. The roof and walls fall so quickly that people in or near the buildings have little time to escape, Miller said. In a powerful quake, the bricks can actually be catapulted across the street.

Strengthening brick buildings with steel bars and beams “buys time” in a temblor, Miller said.

“It (retrofitting) is not necessarily going to save the building,” Miller said. “But it’s going to give people about 20 minutes to get out.”

Scores of unreinforced masonry buildings in the Uptown Whittier area cracked and collapsed in the Oct. 1, 1987, temblor, which measured a magnitude of 5.9. There were more than 60 unreinforced masonry buildings before the quake, city officials estimate. Only 15 remain today. According to city officials, the main reason no one in the Uptown area was crushed to death by falling debris is because the temblor occurred at about 7:40 a.m., before businesses were open.

‘Almost Like Rubble’

Dick Stollenwerk, a Long Beach civil engineer, calls unreinforced buildings “accidents waiting to happen.”

“They are almost like a pile of rubble stacked in an orderly fashion,” Stollenwerk said.

Many buildings in the Los Angeles area were made of unreinforced masonry at the time of the Long Beach earthquake in 1933. After the deadly temblor, which killed 115 people and caused about $40-million damage, building techniques were quickly modified to include steel reinforcements. In cities established after 1933, unreinforced masonry buildings are prohibited.

Long Beach in 1971 was the first to adopt an ordinance requiring that all structures built before 1934 and not constructed of wood be reinforced to withstand earthquakes. In 1981, Los Angeles adopted a less stringent ordinance, which requires all but single-family homes built of unreinforced masonry to be upgraded.

Ed Hensley, a spokesman for the state Seismic Safety Commission, said of the 366 cities and counties affected by the state law, about 90 have given the state an inventory of their unreinforced masonry buildings and adopted mitigation programs to reduced earthquake hazards. Sixty-five other cities reported that they have no unreinforced masonry buildings, Hensley said.

In the Southeast-Long Beach area, eight cities, including Huntington Park, have adopted mitigation ordinances. Nine cities are exempt from establishing an ordinance, because they do not have unreinforced masonry buildings.

The remaining seven cities, except for Bell, have told the state that they are in the process of adopting mitigation programs. Pat West, the deputy city manager in Paramount, said an independent consulting company is still trying to identify the hazardous buildings.

John Bramble, the city manager of Bell, said his city simply cannot afford to hire inspectors to find the hazardous buildings, a common argument in many of the cities that have failed to comply with the state law.

“It’s not cheap,” Bramble said. “We’ve had so many changes in staff . . . and have lost our building inspectors. Because of budget cuts we have not been able to hire (new inspectors).”

Currently the state is trying to find a way to penalize cities and counties that do not comply with the law. But right now the state Seismic Safety Commission has no enforcement power. It is up to the cities to comply or not, Hensley said.

Overall, few cities have blatantly “thumbed their noses” at the state, Hensley said. Many of those that have missed the deadline have told the state Seismic Safety Commission that they will meet the requirements, they just need more time, he said.

Cities that have complied with the law are formulating earthquake safety ordinances similar to those used in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, Hensley said.

The ordinances differ in the amount of time given owners to either upgrade or demolish. For example, in Huntington Park, which passed its earthquake safety ordinance in December, 1988, owners are given about four years to make the required improvements. Several buildings have already been upgraded, and improvements are starting on a few others, Miller said. In Whittier, city officials are considering giving building owners up to seven years to make the improvements. Los Angeles allows building owners about three years to comply with the ordinance.

In most cases, if the improvements are not made, the buildings are closed or torn down.

Bolts, Rods Used

Unreinforced buildings usually are strengthened by bolting the roof, walls and floor together and running steal rods through the walls. The cost can range from $15 to $20 per square foot.

Although the state has set aside money for residential improvements, few funds are available for strengthening commercial structures. Most commercial building owners will have to obtain loans at the market interest rates from their banks, unless cities are able to find alternate funding.

In Whittier, several building owners who survived the Oct. 1, 1987, earthquake said it might have been better if they had lost their buildings in the powerful temblor, when low-interest federal loans and grants were available to rebuild.

“People are scared,” one building owner in Whittier said recently. “We don’t want it (seismic retrofitting) to hurt too much.”

Long Beach wants to purchase bonds, allowing building owners to borrow money at a 30-year fixed-interest rate to take some of the sting out of financing the improvements,

Some building owners in Long Beach are calling the city’s proposal a “godsend.”

“A lot of the buildings in the city are owned by senior citizens who can’t get loans (from banks) with their fixed incomes,” said Jack Finkelstein, who owns several buildings in the downtown area. “It (the bond issue) relieves the burden.”

Long Beach is the only city in the area that has come up with a financial assistance package.

“It’s a shame,” said Gene Rosecrans, a banker who recently spoke at a meeting of Huntington Park building owners. “There is just nothing available financially to help these people.”

Edwin Hayek, a Huntington Park building owner, said he is paying for $155,000 in improvements out of his own pocket.

“The city should offer low-percentage loans,” Hayek said. “It would be nice, especially since they are requiring this of us.”

UNREINFORCED MASONRY BUILDINGS

City: Number

Artesia: 4

Bell *: n/a

Bell Gardens: 0

Bellflower: 50

Cerritos: 0

Commerce *: 9

Compton *: 18

Cudahy: 0

Downey *: 6

Hawaiian Gardens: 0

Huntington Park: 120

La Habra Heights: 0

La Mirada: 0

Lakewood: 0

Long Beach: 650

Lynwood *: 15

Maywood: 25

Montebello: 20

Norwalk: 12

Paramount *: n/a

Pico Rivera *: 7

Santa Fe Springs: 0

Signal Hill: 0

South Gate: 40

Whittier *: 15

Total: 991

*Cities that have not yet adopted an ordinance to reduce the hazards of unreinforced masonry buildings.

Source: The state Seismic Safety Commission

AREA BUILDINGS NEEDING UPGRADE

There are nearly 1,000 unreinforced masonry buildings in the Southeast and Long Beach areas, according to the state Seismic Safety Commission. Here are some of the better-known buildings.

LONG BEACH:

* Farmers & Merchants Bank, 302 Pine Ave.

* Ocean Center Building, 110 W. Ocean Blvd.

* Scottish Rite Cathedral, 855 Elm Ave.

* Lafayette Condominiums, 140 Linden Ave.

* Copper Arms Apartments, 455 E. Ocean Blvd.

HUNTINGTON PARK:

* First Methodist Church, 2660 Gage Ave.

* Seventh-day Adventist Church, 6830 Rita Ave.

* St. Matthias Catholic Church, 6003 Stafford Ave.

* Park Lane Apartments, 7102 Rita Ave.

* California Three Theaters, 6500 block of Pacific Boulevard.

* Park Theater, 6300 block of Pacific Boulevard.

WHITTIER:

* Naylor Hall, Whittier College, 13406 Philadelphia St.

* Bank of America Building, Greenleaf Avenue and Philadelphia Street.

DOWNEY:

* Miller-Mies-McComb Mortuary, 10927 S. Downey Ave.

* Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church (northern half), 10727 S. Downey Ave.

SOUTH GATE:

* Allef Theater, 3809 Tweedy Blvd.

MAYWOOD:

* The Fraternal Order Lodge, 3622 Slauson Ave.

Source: State Seismic Safety Commission.