Fewer Fire Inspections Conducted in Inner City : Safety: Only 30% of buildings are checked annually in poorer areas while wealthier locations are checked 90% of the time, audit finds.

Apartments and residential hotels in Los Angeles’ poorest and most densely populated inner-city neighborhoods receive less frequent fire safety inspections than similar buildings in more affluent parts of the city, a Fire Department study has found.

In South-Central Los Angeles and Pico-Union/Westlake, only about 30% of the buildings from three to five stories received their required annual inspections, while 90% of the apartments in wealthier areas such as Bel-Air and Encino were inspected on time, an 43-page internal audit concluded.

The disparity raises serious questions about how best to maintain an adequate level of fire safety throughout the city, according to fire officials and City Council members. Under the current system, inspectors spend the least time in many of the areas with the greatest fire hazards--crowded, ramshackle buildings where safety equipment is frequently vandalized.

Fire officials blame the imbalance primarily on the heavy volume of emergency calls in poorer areas, which cuts into the time firefighters have to inspect buildings.

But some elected officials charged Thursday that the situation, whatever the cause, is an example of the inner city being neglected. They said the study shows that the suburbs have received a disproportionate amount of fire inspection resources even though poorer areas have a greater need for strong fire prevention programs.

“Public safety means safety for the entire public,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose 8th District in South-Central Los Angeles includes many buildings that were overdue for inspections. Ridley-Thomas, a member of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said he planned to raise the issue at next week’s committee meeting.

Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the Pico-Union/Westlake areas, said: “The system is not fair the way it’s set up now. The bottom line is we need to allocate resources to the neighborhoods with the greatest need.”

Some of the city’s deadliest fires--such as the May 3 blaze that killed 10 people in a Westlake apartment--have occurred in the area surrounding MacArthur Park that includes portions of Hernandez’s district. The area is filled with old apartment buildings and low-income hotels, where the vast majority of units are occupied by more than one family.

The Westlake fire prompted the audit by the Fire Department and another by the city administrative officers that were released this week. Both studies found slipshod fire inspections and widespread fire safety violations--chained fire doors, missing extinguishers and malfunctioning fire alarms, among them.

The audits followed a Times story revealing that many buildings in the Pico-Union/Westlake area had the sorts of serious violations that officials say contributed to the spread of deadly smoke in the fatal fire last spring.

The Fire Department audit called for a variety of measures to increase the percentage of inspections in inner-city areas--including the redeployment of crews from less busy areas and the formation of special task forces that would target problem buildings.

“It is obvious that fire prevention cannot continue to be done in the manner currently being used . . . (and) that fire prevention workload relief must be given to the busy fire stations,” said the audit obtained by The Times.

Capt. Stephen J. Ruda, a department spokesman, said Thursday the low percentage of inspections in South-Central Los Angeles and Pico-Union/Westlake was directly related to the high volume of emergency calls in those areas.

“In those areas of the city where you have a lot of people, the requests for emergency help and fire calls are a lot more intense than other parts of the city,” Ruda said. “Population and density go hand in hand with emergency calls and directly affect a station’s ability to meet fire prevention obligations.”

In Battalion 13 in South-Central Los Angeles, about 30% of the residential buildings received their required inspections, according to the department’s survey. In 1992, Battalion 13 firefighters responded to 34,394 emergency calls, the highest in the city.

In contrast, fire crews in Battalion 17 in Tarzana and Woodland Hills inspected about 95% of their buildings. Firefighters in those San Fernando Valley communities responded to 15,423 calls in 1992.

In Battalion 9, which covers Brentwood and Bel-Air on the Westside, firefighters responded to 11,157 calls and completed about 90% of their inspections.

Under the proposal to establish task forces, teams of inspectors would sweep through densely populated areas, citing violators. The costs of such a program have not been determined, but fire officials have said the efforts could be funded from penalties levied against building owners who fail to repair safety violations.

Another possibility, officials said, is to bring in crews from areas such as the San Fernando Valley and the Westside to cover inner-city stations while firefighters inspect buildings. The department has also proposed requiring several thousand residential hotels and apartments to be fitted with fire protection sprinklers.

Both proposals were welcomed Thursday by city officials, who placed much of the blame for fire code enforcement problems on irresponsible building owners. “In some of these buildings, it doesn’t take a fire inspector to realize that they are unfit for human habitation,” said Councilwoman Rita Walters, who represents portions of South-Central Los Angeles.

Ridley-Thomas said: “We have to make sure that property owners and slumlords get that message that violations will not be tolerated.”

But representatives of building owners said that they were being unfairly signaled out and that much of the blame lies with tenants and vandals who steal fire extinguishers, remove smoke detectors and prop open or nail open fire doors.

“It’s difficult because most owners have to try to keep on these things on a daily basis,” said Rafael Cappucci, owner of a company that manages several inner-city apartment buildings.

Requiring sprinklers would be a huge expense for building owners suffering from high vacancy rates and rent control laws that would prevent them recovering the costs of installing the protection systems, said Trevor Grimm, general counsel for the 25,000-member Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles.

“I don’t believe that the owners should take all the responsibility for this and I don’t know if there is a way to pass the costs on to the tenants,” Grimm said. “For the owners, it would be a major blow.”

Inspections Overdue More than one in three apartments and residential hotels in Los Angeles were overdue for annual fire inspections, according to a Fire Department survey after last May’s fire that killed 10 apartment residents in the Westlake area. Auditors concluded that the battaliondistricts with the highest numbers of emergency calls tended to be those with the lowest fire inspection rates. Source: Los Angeles Fire Department