Better Get Those Sprinklers In : Los Angeles may not be so lucky the next time
The weekend inferno that caused $3 million in damage to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services administration building proved once again that all county high-rise buildings need fire sprinklers. Public safety warrants nothing less.
A city ordinance requires fire sprinklers in all commercial buildings that are seven stories or taller. The county, however, need not comply because municipal ordinances have no effect over county, state or federal buildings within city boundaries.
No one died in Saturday’s huge blaze, although the flames destroyed the seventh floor and made other floors unusable; two firefighters were injured in heat so intense that it partly melted their helmets. But would the death toll have been zero if the fire had happened on a workday?
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is beginning to ask questions. The board voted Tuesday to determine how many county buildings lack sprinklers, how much retrofitting would cost and whether a bond measure to pay for the expense could be placed on the June ballot. The supervisors also asked why the health services building, constructed in 1971, lacked sprinklers. Those are important questions, and some of them have been asked before.
The supervisors asked similar questions in 1988 in the wake of the deadly First Interstate Bank fire in downtown Los Angeles. A few months after that fire, a survey indicated that the county had more than two dozen high-rise buildings--including three public hospitals--that lacked sprinklers. The cost of retrofitting was estimated at between $61.5 and $85.3 million.
Nothing was done.
The L.A. City Council, faced with a similarly staggering expense for fire safety, put on the ballot in 1989 a $60-million bond measure to pay for sprinklers and asbestos removal. The voters approved.
County supervisors may not have a legal obligation to approve fire sprinklers, but they do have a moral obligation to the public, to county employees and to firefighters.
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