New Juvenile Camp Holds Classes in Dorms Due to Faulty Alarms

Problems with the fire alarm system at a new Los Angeles County probation camp for juveniles, which opened Sunday in Lancaster, have forced administrators to leave the camp’s school building empty and hold classes in dormitories instead.

The volume of outdoor fire alarm horns must be increased so they can be better heard in the classrooms of the county’s newest and largest juvenile camp, the Challenger Memorial Youth Complex, probation officials said.

Willie Doyle, the camp’s acting director, said there is no threat to the safety of the 250 juveniles who were moved into the camp after it opened Sunday night. The alarm system is being modified and officials hope that classrooms can be used in about two weeks, she said.

County Fire Capt. Pat Gaynor said the problem with the alarm system requires “fine-tuning” but that it is not great enough to constitute a fire hazard.

Probation officials said they decided to proceed with the opening of the Challenger camp Sunday night because they were two weeks behind schedule and wanted to relieve overcrowding in the juvenile detention system. Probation officers marched about 230 juvenile wards about a block from the older Mira Loma camp that Challenger is replacing. The arrivals Monday brought the camp population to 250, Doyle said.

The 42-acre, $35-million Challenger complex has been touted as a state-of-the-art facility that will relieve the strain on the county’s three juvenile halls and provide improved security and evaluation of juvenile offenders. It is named after the destroyed Challenger space shuttle and contains six separate camps with a total of 660 beds. Only 330 juveniles will be housed initially because there is not enough money in the department’s budget to open the entire camp.