Christo Project Insured for $2 Million : Liability: The policy was a condition of approval for the umbrellas’ installation. Kern and L.A. counties are not expected to be held responsibile for death.

Environmental artist Christo had at least $2 million in liability insurance on his giant umbrella project in which a woman was killed, Kern County officials said Monday as they explored their own possible liability in the death.

That policy--and a “hold harmless” clause in the artist’s county permit--probably means Kern County would not be legally responsible for the death, which occurred on county land, officials said.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles county officials, who also approved the project which straddles the two counties, sent building engineers to tour the 19-mile stretch of the Tejon Pass where Christo crew members continued dismantling the 1,760 umbrellas. This weekend, strong winds had uprooted several umbrellas--including the one that killed Lori Keevil-Mathews of Camarillo on Saturday--and destroyed hundreds more.

Building and safety officials in both counties said they based their approvals of the $26-million project largely on detailed information supplied by the Christo organization. Included were structural engineering reports, traffic studies and even a wind tunnel test performed in Canada, they said.

The wind tunnel tests were required by Los Angeles County and Japan, where 1,340 blue umbrellas in the bi-continental project were erected.

“We told him that if his test data didn’t show they can withstand the winds up there, he wasn’t going to get approval,” said Tom Remillard, superintendent of building for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

Jim Hogg, chief of the Kern County engineering department, said he was “extremely surprised when I heard about the accident on TV.”

“Of anybody that has processed plans through here,” Hogg said, “they were probably the most careful that their structures were adequate to handle the wind load.”

State building codes employed by both counties rate much of the Tejon Pass as a 70-m.p.h. wind zone, but the umbrellas were only tested to withstand 65 m.p.h. winds in an open position.

“Yes, I guess we knew that. . .but in all construction, you basically design for something less than the worst-case scenario, assuming that something worse than that isn’t going to cause failure, but will just require some repairs,” Hogg said.

As a precautionary measure, Christo had given his crews instructions to close umbrellas whenever winds reached 35 m.p.h., but because they are cranked by hand, they could not be closed fast enough when winds unexpectedly picked up on Saturday. Christo officials have said they chose October because it was “the calmest month” in the windy pass, but private and public weather experts dispute that, saying storms often pass through in mid- to late-October.

Liability in the event of a lawsuit seemed to be foremost in public officials’ minds Monday. Keevil-Mathews’s mother-in-law, Shirley Bjornestad, said several attorneys already had telephoned, but the family had been busy making funeral arrangements and had not had time to think about filing a lawsuit.

The umbrella that killed Keevil-Mathews was located on a Kern County right of way. In Bakersfield, County Counsel Bernie Barmann Sr. said the county’s land encroachment permit included a “hold harmless” clause, which guaranteed Christo would defend the county in the case of a suit.

The county also required proof of liability insurance for the project and Christo submitted a policy for $2 million, Barmann said, which covers the two counties, the state and private landowners who allowed umbrellas to be constructed on their properties.

Legal scholars say the counties likely would not have to share in any judgments against the project. Instead, they said, the liability would probably fall to Christo, to his designers and to the umbrella manufacturers.

“This is a public relations disaster for Christo,” said Prof. Gary Schwartz, who teaches tort law at UCLA. “I would suspect . . . that there would be a good chance of a quick and generous settlement, if he is in the financial situation to do so.”

Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude Javacheff, have repeatedly said they spent all their savings, and all the money they could borrow, on the $26-million project, from which they reap no profits. However, Christo’s drawings and other artwork, which finances his enormous undertakings, carry price tags of up to $360,000, so raising more money might not be a problem.

“The Umbrellas” is the third of Christo’s major projects to be heavily damaged or destroyed by the wind. However, no one was injured in those other mishaps.

In 1969, wind damage forced him to partially redo “Wrapped Coast” in Australia, in which he covered 1 million square feet of coastline near Sydney with sheets of white polypropylene.

Both versions of Valley Curtain, a 200,000-square-foot orange nylon curtain suspended across a mountain gap in Colorado in 1971 and again in 1972, were shredded by the wind.