Orange County Clubs Are Under Rigid Supervision, Officials Say

The kind of blaze that trapped and killed 87 people in a New York City dance hall early Sunday would be unlikely to cause devastation of a similar scale in Orange County nightclubs, where fire-safety ordinances are rigidly enforced, local fire officials said.

And unlike New York, where Happy Land was among an estimated 175 clubs to have been cited for safety violations, in Orange County fire officials said Sunday that they knew of no establishments operating without necessary fire and building-safety permits.

“It would have to be extremely clandestine to exist,” said Battalion Chief Jim Dalton of the Santa Ana Fire Department. “Someone may have snuck something in, but everything that comes into town has to go through the city for approval. And we inspect everything new.”

Orange County has numerous nightclubs that cater to a particular ethnic group, as New York officials said the Happy Land club did in drawing a primarily Honduran and Dominican crowd. In Anaheim, Santa Ana and Westminster, fire officials said, Vietnamese- and Latino-oriented clubs are flourishing. Anaheim has a number of German-, Dutch- and teen-oriented clubs as well, Anaheim Deputy Fire Marshal Gail A. McCloud said.

But McCloud said that all nightclubs, ethnic and otherwise, are closely monitored by fire officials throughout Orange County to make sure that they adhere to the minimum basic requirements of the Uniform Fire Code, a safety standard set by U.S. fire chiefs.

According to McCloud, the requirements include:

* At least two exits for occupancies of more than 50 people. Three exits are required for occupancies of more than 500, while four are required if the crowd exceeds 1,000.

* Fireproof decorative materials inside the club.

* Automatic sprinklers in any new building or any in which the designated use has been changed for nightclub purposes.

After obtaining city approval to open, McCloud said, the clubs must undergo annual fire inspections to make sure they continue to comply with the fire code. If they are found to be out of compliance, a notice of violation is issued and the club is given a deadline within which either to comply or be closed down.

However, McCloud said, in his 15 years with the city he has never known of a club being closed under those circumstances.

“Most of the violations are corrected without any problem,” McCloud said. “The people that operate these clubs don’t want any more trouble than anybody else.”

Dalton said the most common fire-safety violation among nightclubs is overcrowding. Either police or fire officials correct the problem by reducing the crowd to its legal occupancy level and then directing club officials to allow only one person inside for every one who leaves.

But safety measures cannot prevent an arson blaze, such as is suspected in the Happy Land disaster. The Mustang Club in Santa Ana, for instance, burned to the ground in an arson fire that was set after operating hours. Orange County fire officials interviewed Sunday could not recall any major local nightclub arson fires while patrons were inside.