Fire Hits Buena Park Union Hall : Blaze: Records were destroyed and $3 million in damage was done to the United Food & Commercial Workers facility. Arson is ruled out.

A three-alarm fire ripped through the United Food & Commercial Workers Union hall on Wednesday morning, gutting offices, destroying records and causing almost $3 million in damage.

About a third of the 36,000-square-foot building in the 8500 block of Stanton Avenue was destroyed in the blaze, which was reported anonymously shortly before 5 a.m., Buena Park fire marshal Donald C. Tully said.

The fire was quenched at 6:30 a.m., Tully said, but firefighters remained on the scene throughout the day, extinguishing stubborn hot spots.

“It was cooking pretty good inside,” Tully said. “There’s not much left inside.”

The blaze put the local’s operations in total disarray, transforming records, desks and computers into cinders and prompting local President John C. Sperry to cut short a trip to the annual meeting of the union’s national board in Miami.

Many of the 70 people employed in the building learned about the fire as they drove to work. Some were called while still at home.

“They told me I had to come in anyway,” said administrative assistant Polly Harrington as she and others stood in the building’s parking lot and watched firefighters hack away at the roof of the burned-out shell that served as Local 324’s headquarters.

“I heard about it (on the radio) when I was coming to work,” said treasurer Joseph Sanzone. “I was shocked.”

No one was in the building at the time of the fire and there were no injuries among the 64 firefighters called to battle the blaze. Luckily, much of the hall’s most valuable records, including membership lists and financial documents, were locked up in a 10-inch-thick cement vault and spared, authorities said.

The office was demolished, and officials said it will take weeks for union officials to assess total damage.

Fire officials have not determined the cause of the blaze, but ruled out arson. Investigators have narrowed the point of ignition to a 20-foot-by-20-foot crawl space above the ceiling in the center of the office area that housed electrical equipment.

The blaze damaged the Retail Clerks Credit Union, also in the building, Tully said. An adjacent auditorium was spared, thanks in large part to a fire wall that separated the hall from the offices.

Union workers said the fire would set back operations for at least several weeks and force cancellation of several events in the auditorium, including a labor law conference sponsored by the National Labor Relations Board scheduled for Feb. 15.

“Some of that stuff (lost in the fire) has to be almost irreplaceable,” said Theodore Horn, assistant regional director of the NLRB.

Tully said that a fire dispatcher received the initial call from a pay phone across the street from the union hall. The caller was unidentified.

Moments later, the first of 10 engine crews arrived, but did not see any smoke or flames. When the crew broke into the front door, they were met with intense heat and smoke.

“They did make an attack on the fire, but the ceiling fell and they had to back out,” Tully said.

As the ceiling crashed to the floor, steel girders that had fallen impeded firefighters’ efforts to extinguish burning debris, including desks, tables, chairs and documents, near the floor.

But using cranes, firefighters were able to pour thousands of gallons of water on the flames, which leaped 25 feet into the air, and stop them from reaching the auditorium portion of the tan-colored building.

Meanwhile, police blocked traffic at the intersection of Stanton and Crescent avenues while firefighters worked on the burning building.

As fire officials probed the ashes looking for clues late Wednesday morning, union workers tried to conduct as much business as possible. Temporary telephone lines were connected in the auditorium and workers sorted through piles of mail on folding tables in the hall’s foyer.

“We have to just start getting ourselves up and set up a temporary place,” Harrington said resignedly.

Others tried to keep their spirits up.

John Layton and Herb Taylor, the union hall’s two full-time maintenance workers who were the last to leave the building Tuesday night, joked about the tons of debris that will have to be removed before reconstruction of the building can take place.

“We take out trash, dust the place and sometimes do windows,” Layton said. “But we’re not going to do (clean) that carpet.”

“Yeah, it’s a mess,” Taylor said. “I don’t get paid to clean that.”

UNION FACTS

The 22,000-member Local 324 of the United Food & Commercial Workers union covers all of Orange County and parts of Long Beach.

Membership includes:

* 18,000 supermarket retail clerks.

* 2,000 Disneyland retail employees.

* 1,000 pharmacists and drug clerks.

The remainder are barbers, cosmetologists and insurance workers.

The international union, based in Washington, is the second largest in the United States with 1.3 million members.

Source: Local 324.