Officials Didn’t Take Legal Steps Before Fatal Fire

Although two previous arson fires had revealed serious fire hazards at a Westlake district apartment building, city fire officials failed to follow established fire code enforcement procedures in the days before Monday’s tragic blaze, records and interviews showed Wednesday.

During the fires April 10 and 12, officials noted that fire doors--designed to close automatically to retard the spread of flames and smoke--were wedged open and alarms were not functioning properly. But several fire doors were still propped--and nailed--open when Monday’s fire started.

Because of the code violations noted April 10, the Fire Department immediately ordered the posting of a 24-hour fire watch until the violations were corrected. But documents and interviews indicate that no corrections were made and the watch was never set up.

Under city regulations, the department should have immediately referred the case to the fire marshal’s legal office so that an emergency hearing could be scheduled. But there is nothing to indicate such a referral was made.

Asked about these apparent lapses, fire officials said it is not uncommon for bureaucratic delays to hold up corrective action, sometimes for months.

“That is not an acceptable answer, but that is life in Los Angeles,” said Battalion Chief Dean E. Cathey, a department spokesman. “If the (building’s management) had told us, ‘Screw you guys, I’m not going to do it,’ it still would have taken us three months to force them to do it.”

Cathey’s explanation came as the death toll in Monday’s fire rose to 10 and investigators became increasingly suspicious that the suffocating blaze was the work of an arsonist.

“There is a good possibility, based on limited evidence, that it was deliberately set,” Cathey said.

He said investigators still are not sure how the fire started, but they have ruled out all accidental causes. “It was no accident in a mechanical sense, such as a (faulty) hot plate or electrical appliance,” he said. “For now, we are only saying that the fire is of a suspicious nature.”

Investigators were still following up reports that the fire may have been started by drug dealers bent on revenge after they were ordered from the building by a building manager.

Isabel Grimaldi started managing the building Monday, the day of the fire. Earlier that morning, she said, she saw a group of young men selling drugs outside the building and urged them to take their trade elsewhere. She said one of them told her, “You’re right, Senora ,” and they crossed the street. “They didn’t seem mad,” she said. “I don’t think the fire had anything to do with revenge against me.”

Grimaldi, who escaped Monday’s fire by jumping from the balcony of her second-story apartment, said she knew nothing about the order for a fire watch nor about malfunctioning alarms. When she met with the owners three days before the fire, they discussed apartment vacancies, she said.

The Burlington Avenue apartment complex is located on a block that has seen an upswing in narcotics activity during the last six months, said Los Angeles Police Department Officer Brian Gilman, who oversees the area.

The drug activity primarily involves street sales of rock cocaine to motorists, he said. “They come from all over and from all walks of life, from the Westside, San Fernando Valley, Orange County.”

Recently, Gilman said, it appeared that the building was being used by narcotics dealers “to escape from police.” He said the owner of the building contacted him several months ago, seeking advice on ways to combat drug activity in the area. “He was concerned about his tenants and willing to get involved,” Gilman said.

Gilman said he had talked to Richard I. Kaufman, president of the firm that oversees management of the building. Sidney and Frances Kaufman are listed in property records as the general partners who head the investment group that owns the 69-unit Burlington Apartments.

The Kaufmans could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A receptionist at the property management company headed by Richard Kaufman hung up on a reporter.

Asked about fire code enforcement at the property, fire officials said Wednesday that after a suspicious fire broke out April 10 on the second floor of the building and the violations were discovered, the building’s manager was ordered to post a guard as a fire watch. The guard was to patrol the building’s corridors once every half-hour, recording his progress in an official logbook. The order called for the posting “forthwith.”

“That means to take care of the problem now, not tomorrow,” said Fire Inspector Frank Cordova, who works in the legal division of the city fire marshal’s office.

William Miranda, who managed the building at the time, said he forwarded the order to Richard Kaufman on April 13.

“My responsibility was to pass this on to the owner,” Miranda said. “I gave the paper to him, just like I gave him the rent and everything else.”

But a fire watch was never implemented, according to Miranda and nearly a dozen residents. There is no record to indicate that a watch was established.

Fire Capt. John Martinez, one of the commanders of Fire Station 11, the station that issued the fire watch order April 10, declined to comment on the Burlington Avenue fire.

But he said that although policy varies throughout the department, he usually gives an owner up to two weeks to correct a code violation, such as faulty sprinklers. Monday’s fire occurred three weeks after the correction orders were issued.

Two days after the April 10 fire, inspectors revisited the building in response to a car fire in the parking garage. They returned April 16 when a broken faucet caused minor flooding. Fire Chief Donald Manning said inspectors noticed on both occasions that the violations had not been corrected and the fire watch order was reissued.

Inspection records provided to The Times carry no indication of whether the building owners were complying with the fire watch order. Cathey said that to the best of his knowledge, those were the complete inspection records for the building since April 10.

The records also do not indicate that the department took any action to enforce the fire watch order or to bring the building into code compliance.

Fire inspectors did not follow department procedures by promptly referring the case to the legal division of the fire marshal’s office, according to records and interviews.

This office can arrange an emergency hearing with the owner, a prosecutor from the city attorney’s office and a hearing officer, Cordova said.

“Within four or five days,” Cordova said, “we’ll sit down with the owner . . . and if he still doesn’t correct the problem, the city attorney prepares a criminal misdemeanor filing.”

Cathey said he could not confirm whether the matter was referred to the legal division for enforcement. “It appears that it was not,” he said.

Robin Weinstein, in charge of hearings held on fire violations, said she has no record of any hearing--emergency or otherwise--held on the Burlington Avenue apartments since April 10. “I don’t think there was any,” Weinstein said.

Records covering fire inspections at the building prior to April 10 are missing, officials said.

“We have nothing to hide,” Cathey said. “It is an odd combination of instances--we have been unable to access the computer files because of a glitch and the hard copies of the records have been misplaced.”

Cathey called the questions about the department’s handling of the case prior to Monday’s fire “nit-picking. . . . We want to keep our people focused on the investigation.”

Two more victims of the fire succumbed to their injuries Tuesday night, raising the death toll to 10, the coroner’s office said. Rosalia Ruiz, 20, died at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Los Angeles, and Jose Camargo, 4, who had been on life-support systems, died at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, officials said. At the fire scene Wednesday, workers put up a chain-link fence to help secure the three-story building as arson investigators and other experts continued to comb the debris. Security guards posted outside the building allowed residents to enter three at a time between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to gather belongings.

About a mile across town in Lafayette Park, Red Cross officials set up a service center for those left homeless by the fire, providing information on financial aid and other assistance.

“I just hope they can help us find another apartment,” said Guadalupe Servin, 28, who escaped with her five children by clambering down from a third-floor balcony with the help of neighbors.

About 90 former residents of the building remained housed on cots in a makeshift shelter in the gymnasium at Belmont High School. Red Cross officials were providing three meals a day, along with vouchers for additional food, clothing and other needs.

Times staff writers Robert J. Lopez, Eric Malnic and Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this story.