D.A. Opens Probe Into Tunnel Fire

The district attorney’s office launched a criminal investigation Monday into the cause of a stubborn fire that gutted a downtown Metro Rail tunnel and forced closure of U.S. 101, the Hollywood Freeway.

As lanes of the crippled freeway gradually reopened Monday, the county prosecutor’s office began investigating whether circumstances leading to the blaze involved criminal acts. This could include arson or flagrant safety violations, but officials declined to elaborate.

“We have opened an investigation into the circumstances of the tunnel fire,” district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.

Meanwhile, repair of the burned-out Metro Rail tunnel under the freeway proceeded slowly, with only a portion of the normally busy roadway reopened by Monday evening.

But with commuters forewarned, the nightmarish gridlock that officials had feared failed to materialize.

Two northbound lanes of a 1.5-mile stretch of the freeway, closed after the fire devastated the unfinished subway tunnel on Friday, were opened to traffic in time for the morning rush hour. By evening, two more northbound lanes were opened, and officials said the final two northbound lanes might be opened this morning

Traffic may be allowed on the rest of the northbound and most of the southbound roadway within days, the state Department of Transportation announced.

In addition, the El Monte busway, a separate, elevated structure, was open to regular vehicular traffic and carpooling regulations were not enforced.

Despite dire predictions, Monday morning’s traffic jams were not too bad, as Los Angeles traffic jams go. The evening rush hour was a little heavier than normal through downtown, but manageable, Caltrans officials said.

Most motorists apparently heeded advice and found their way around the downtown corridor of the Hollywood Freeway between the four-level interchange and the Los Angeles River. They took alternate routes, left home or work earlier than usual, or simply stayed away.

“It clicked for us,” Dave Roper, deputy district director of Caltrans, said. “People knew and people responded. People made the changes. It worked; we saw the results.”

Heavy trucks were not permitted on the freeway lanes reopened to traffic .

Origin of the fire, which gutted much of the 750-foot long tunnel and caused one section to cave in a short distance from the freeway, remained a mystery Monday.

“We have no information regarding the cause of the fire,” Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief Jim Young said.

Young said the fire marshal and members of an arson unit had completed an inspection of the tunnel about midday Monday. Fire Department officials declined to comment on the involvement of the district attorney’s office in the investigation.

Jan Chatten-Brown, special assistant to the district attorney in the environmental crimes/OSHA division, said the prosecutor’s office is empowered to look at serious violations of Cal/OSHA regulations and is waiting for the agency to advise them of its conclusions in the case.

A representative for the contractor building the tunnel confirmed Monday he had been contacted by the district attorney’s office and the arson squad.

The fire, which erupted at about 1:50 a.m. Friday, raged for hours, fed by plastic lining and thick wooden timbers used to cover the tunnel’s walls and prevent underground toxic gases from seeping in. The blaze was finally declared out 48 hours later.

“It’s pretty much a burned-out hulk,” Battalion Chief Raymond Olsen said of the southern end of the tunnel, the part that burned the longest.

Work to shore up the weakened tunnel began Saturday. Crews have since labored around the clock to erect aluminum braces and to replace damaged wood and steel supports in an effort to reinforce the section of the tunnel that runs under the freeway so that it can withstand the weight of heavy vehicular traffic.

But the slow work has proven more difficult than first anticipated. As crews moved deeper into the shaft, they encountered more damage. Steel rings that circle the tunnel’s circumference were twisted and contorted by the intense heat of the blaze, which at its height reached temperatures approaching 2,000 degrees.

On Monday, workers were shoring up about 6 to 8 feet of tunnel per hour, according to Edward McSpedon, acting president of the Rail Construction Corp., a subsidiary of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which is building the Metro Rail subway.

As of noon Monday, workers struggling under high temperatures and in cramped conditions, had shored up about 184 feet. The section that runs under the freeway and the elevated, adjacent bus way is about 250 feet.

Caltrans officials said it was still too early to predict when the tunnel-shoring would be completed and the tunnel is once again strong enough to bear the weight of normal freeway traffic. The most far-right southbound lane--the lane closest to the cave-in--will probably remain closed longer than the rest of the road, Roper said.

Two northbound lanes--an outer lane and the shoulder--were opened at 6:45 a.m. Monday, and two additional northbound lanes were t opened Monday evening, a Caltrans spokeswoman said. The remaining northbound lanes could be opened as early as this morning’s commute.

Traffic engineers said that if motorists keep using the alternate routes until reopening of the entire Hollywood Freeway “slot,” as the closed segment is known, major tieups can be avoided.

In Monday’s commute, some of the alternate routes jammed up considerably--especially the Santa Monica Freeway--but in most cases, traffic on other freeways, surface streets and the busway was heavy, but manageable.

“It took some of them a little longer than usual, but it went pretty smoothly,” Officer Lydia Martinez, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol, said of the morning commute.

For the drive home, the traffic backed up in a few spots, such as the Hollywood southbound north of the closed section and the Harbor Freeway south of the four-level interchange, where motorists tried to pick up the 10 to go east.

“It seemed like everybody had the same idea,” CHP Officer Harold Daily said.

Advance planning by commuters and a general ease of traffic flow due to summer vacations apparently deserved most of the credit for keeping the commuters moving. Some potential commuters, discouraged by news reports and Caltrans warnings, may have simply stayed away.

The widely publicized freeway closure seemed to have generated a response reminiscent of the one during the 1984 Summer Olympics--when forecast traffic jams failed to develop as drivers avoided congested areas.

Thousands of drivers heading into the city from the east left the San Bernardino, Pomona and Santa Ana freeways as they neared town, instead using such surface arteries as Main, Macy, 1st, 4th and 7th streets.

Thousands more heading in from the north and west abandoned the Hollywood Freeway in favor of such routes as Beverly Boulevard, 3rd Street and Wilshire Boulevard.

Reza Nasrollahy, a clothing manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles, found no change Monday morning from his normal commute from Glendale.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “It’s the same.”

On Friday, the day of the fire, it took Joe Guzman an hour and 10 minutes to drive from his home in Boyle Heights to his job in Chinatown. Monday morning’s drive took only about 20 minutes.

“There’s still a lot of traffic but that’s normal,” the 22-year-old stock clerk said.

He said drivers behaved better too.

“You didn’t have people trying to make their own lanes,” Guzman said. “That’s what happened Friday. Today it was better.”

But it wasn’t better for everyone.

One commuter, who asked not to be named, said his commute from Newport Beach to downtown Los Angeles nearly doubled in time Monday morning.

“It was wonderful, for a while,” he said. “(But) the last 4 to 5 miles were death.”

Times staff writers Jeffrey L. Rabin, Hector Tobar, Penelope McMillan and Tracy Wood contributed to this story.