Officials Study Failure of Shopping Center Overhang : Camarillo: A Ventura County safety engineer says it is unclear whether the architect, builder or another factor should be blamed.

As repairmen and county building inspectors clambered over the wreckage of a collapsed shopping center overhang in Camarillo on Tuesday, fire officials questioned the safety of its cantilever design.

In the past two years, similar overhangs collapsed on three Los Angeles County buildings, killing a firefighter, officials said.

Ventura County safety engineer G. D. Mayer said the 10-year-old overhang at the Ponderosa Center should have held up--even though its thousands of pounds of stucco and clay tile were hung on a frame of 2-by-6-inch wood planks nailed together.

But about 8 p.m. Monday, part of the overhang gave way and its weight brought the remaining 200 feet of overhang crashing down onto the second-floor balcony.

The debris blocked the doors of several offices and shops, briefly trapping a worker inside a costume shop. He was rescued unhurt by firefighters who chopped through the wall of a neighboring office.

The collapse spurred officials Tuesday to order the rest of the overhang to be shored up with thick beams.

“There was a lot of weight on there. The whole system failed,” said Daniel LaManno, the general contractor overseeing the repairs. “Every now and then, it just happens. . . . The joke is, my office is up there” trapped behind the debris, he said.

Mayer said it is unclear whether the collapse of the cantilevered overhang--a tile and stucco roof hung on a system of diagonal wood braces--should be blamed on the architect, the builder or another factor.

Executives at McClellan Gaylord Cruz of Pasadena, the architecture firm, and Charles Licha Construction of Encino, the builder, said none of their cantilevered overhangs have ever collapsed before.

But Emmett Kinney, a recently retired Los Angeles County firefighter, said Tuesday that most firefighters know that cantilevered overhangs can be as dangerous as one that was involved in the death of a colleague.

Jim Howe, a 23-year county firefighter, was killed during a January, 1991, fire at a Huntington Park office building at State and Randolph streets, officials said.

Kinney said an undamaged portion of overhang collapsed, dragging down the rest along the entire face of the building. The debris pinned Howe and trapped Kinney and other firefighters behind the iron bars of the balcony railing, Kinney said.

Howe suffocated, but Kinney and the others were freed after other firefighters cut through the bars.

“They’re putting up all these little shopping centers, and the guys mark it in their heads so they know them, and they’ll be damn careful if there’s a fire there,” said Kinney, now a Camarillo resident, as he surveyed the wreckage at Ponderosa Center.

He said Fire Department engineers estimated that just 100 square feet of the Huntington Park building’s overhang weighed close to 1,000 pounds.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives are investigating whether murder charges would be appropriate in Howe’s death because the building had collapsed during an arson, Fire Capt. Steve Valenzuela said.

He said similar overhangs have collapsed elsewhere in Los Angeles County in the past two years.

Not long after Howe was killed, an overhang collapsed during a fire at a Huntington Park coin-operated laundry.

Then, in October, an overhang collapsed at a blazing Hollywood flower shop.

“Several firefighters missed getting major injuries and getting killed only because their hose broke and they fell back away from it” as it crumpled, Valenzuela said.

Architect Rick Gaylord said the Ponderosa Center’s overhang is the only failure among more than 800 cantilevered overhangs that his company designed throughout the western United States.

“We’d speculate it was not constructed according to design specs,” he said. He added that one of his architects inspected the site Tuesday and would review plans and consult with safety officials.

Jay Bauer, project manager for Charles Licha Construction, said that none of his company’s cantilevered overhangs had ever failed. But he said the company’s engineers must look first at the site and all of the plans before they can say why the roof collapsed.

The building’s second floor will remain closed for several days until Camarillo code inspectors rule it is safe, said Assistant City Manager Larry Davis. The first floor might be reopened today, he said.

Last month, a roof crossbeam collapsed in the Vons market attached to the building, but it apparently was built at a different time, said Richard Leonard, attorney for Ponderosa Center Partners, the shopping center’s owners. No one was injured, and no serious property damage was reported, he said.