PANORAMA CITY : County Considers Temporary Quarters After Welfare Office Fire

The county may set up shop in portable trailers or rent temporary quarters to cope with an arson fire that forced its busiest welfare office to shut down indefinitely, officials said Wednesday.

The Panorama City office on Lanark Street remained boarded up Wednesday while county inspectors prepared a report on the extent of the damage from Tuesday’s pre-dawn fire.

The fire was set by an arsonist who broke in and doused the second floor of the east wing with gasoline before fleeing. Police said no one had been arrested as of late Wednesday.

A handful of welfare workers were stationed at card tables outside the burned building, where they dispensed advice under blue canopies to some of the 91,500 people a month who receive aid from the office. They referred most people to the county’s Canoga Park office. Damage to the building is extensive enough to prompt county officials to consider temporarily relocating the office. Thousands of charred files continued to smolder Wednesday, and firefighters were forced to return about noon to put one blaze out.

County officials toured a vacant building that is available for lease across the street from the burned office, said Bill Reyes, a top county welfare official.

The 30,000-square-foot office building is available for 59 cents a square foot, or $17,700 a month, said a real estate agent handling the property. The building has been vacant for more than a year, he said.

The county pays about 14 cents a square foot, or $6,910 a month, to rent the Panorama City office under a 10-year lease that expires in 2002, said Michelle Callahan, head of space services for the county Department of Public Social Services.

“The location is pretty good,” Reyes said. But he stressed the county is considering other options, including portable trailers, and that no decisions will be made until he finds out how long it will take to reopen the burned building.

Welfare workers praised the public for responding calmly to delays caused by the fire.

“People have been really great--I’m really impressed,” welfare supervisor Denise Vasquez said.

All but about 200 case records were in the welfare department’s central computer, and benefit checks should not be affected, officials said.

Despite assurances from welfare workers, some people were worried that they would not receive their checks today as scheduled. Louis Allen, an unemployed laborer whose application for benefits was destroyed in the fire, frowned when he learned he would have to reapply at the Canoga Park office.

“I have this much gas to get over there,” Allen said, holding up a thumb and forefinger up to indicate a pinch.