Residence Hotel Fire Kills 3; Arson Suspected

A suspected arson fire raced through a crowded Downtown residential hotel early Monday, killing three residents, injuring 19 and sending tenants screaming and scrambling for safety through flames and thick black smoke.

One tenant was seriously injured when he jumped from the second floor to escape the pre-dawn fire and a woman threw her baby from a second-story window into the arms of tenants who had made their way to the sidewalk below. Twelve people were injured critically, including eight children who suffered smoke inhalation and burns, officials said.

“The whole place was filled with black smoke. People were screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’ It was horrible,” said Alex Fonesca, who tried in vain to rescue his mother-in-law and her sister who lived just two rooms away.

The blaze was the second multiple-fatality fire in the city in just over six months. It came five weeks after a Los Angeles Fire Department internal audit found that 70% of the residential apartments and hotels in the city had life-threatening fire safety violations.

On Monday, firefighters found the bodies of Rebecca G. Salazar, 61, and her younger sister, Elsa Casillas, in the hallway of the run-down, two-story building in the 1100 block of South Grand Avenue that has a history of fire, health and building code violations.

The fire also claimed the life of a 46-year-old man, whose identity was not made public pending notification of relatives.

Fonesca said he tried to rescue the women shortly after he heard screams and banging on his door. As he put on his pants and shoes, black smoke was already seeping under his door. He wet a towel, wrapped it around his face and went to look for the two women, leaving his pregnant wife in their room.

But outside his door, it was pandemonium. “Everybody was screaming and bumping into each other,” he said. “The smoke was so thick you couldn’t breathe.”

Although the women were only two doors away, Fonesca was unable to reach their room. “I was worried about my pregnant wife. I went back to be with her,” he said.

With their room filling with smoke, they stuck their heads out the window and were rescued several minutes later by firefighters who propped a ladder against the building.

The son of Rebecca Salazar stood weeping outside the blackened tenement as investigators sifted through the rubble. “I lost my mother and my aunt,” said Mario Carillo, tears rolling down his face. “We have no money. We can’t afford two funerals.”

Tenant Mercedes Bolanos carried her 1-year-old child, Carina, into the hallway of the burning building but was forced back by the heavy smoke. Desperate, she tossed the baby out her second-story window into the arms of residents below. The child was unhurt. “I didn’t want her to die,” Bolanos said. “I had to do it.”

Too frightened to jump, the mother decided to stay in her room and was rescued by firefighters who escorted her down a ladder. “The alarms never sounded,” she said.

Several survivors said the building’s smoke detectors failed to go off during the blaze, but fire investigators said that tenants had covered some alarms with plastic so that cooking smoke from hot plates in the cramped living quarters would not activate them.

Even so, at least one resident, who was badly burned, said he heard fire alarms and considered ignoring them because they had been going off since they were installed a month ago.

But when Juan Pedro, 18, opened the door to his one-room apartment, “the hallway was full of fire.”

Speaking from his bed at Good Samaritan Hospital, Pedro told of dashing through the flames down the second-floor corridor and stumbling to the floor, choking on smoke. A friend helped him down burning stairs and outside.

“Otherwise, I would have lain there and died,” said Pedro, a garment worker who suffered second-degree burns over 25% of his body. A native of Guatemala who came to this country in 1987, Pedro was concerned that he would be fired because he did not show up at work on Monday.

At least two of the fatalities were caused by smoke inhalation as the victims tried to escape, fire officials said. Had they stayed in their rooms, they probably would have survived, said Capt. Stephen J. Ruda, a Fire Department spokesman. “Their chances for survival would have been greatly enhanced,” he said.

Assistant Chief Bob Neamy said that there were emergency instructions posted in the building, but only in English.

Under the city fire code, such instructions must also be posted in Spanish if most of the residents speak that language. Tenants said nearly all the residents in the building were immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Investigators also found that a fire escape ladder at the front of the building was inoperable, but said the defect did not appear to have contributed to deaths or injuries.

Officials said they believe an arsonist used a chemical accelerant to spread the blaze, which apparently started in the second-floor hallway of the 46-unit hotel.

Although investigators Monday had not established a motive for arson, police said residents reported that a tenant evicted three days earlier may have wanted to get even.

“We have heard there were some threats. We’re trying to run that down,” said Detective Lawrence Garrett of the Los Angeles Police Department’s criminal conspiracy detail.

Officials said the fire was confined to the second floor and caused an estimated $170,000 in damage. When the first fire engine arrived shortly before 3 a.m., smoke was billowing out the front of the building.

Monday’s blaze was at least the second to hit the residential hotel, built more than 60 years ago as a four-story structure. Ten years ago, another fire damaged the top two stories, and they were demolished.

In 1987-88, the building was investigated by an interagency slum task force that targets the city’s worst apartment buildings.

Robert Barton, senior inspector for the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, said task force members found code violations including defective smoke alarms, dangerous wiring and an inoperable fire door.

The building was owned at the time by Socorro Ramirez and Joe Zamorano, who are active real estate investors, according to property records.

In July, 1988, Ramirez pleaded no contest to six counts of code violations in connection with the building and was fined $4,000 and put on 24 months probation, according to Richard Bobb, supervising deputy city attorney.

The owners repaired the building sufficiently for it to be removed from the task force target list, Bobb said.

Fire inspection records show that the building subsequently was cited for only minor violations that were corrected.

The building was last inspected in February, when it was cited for a locked fire escape, records show. That violation was corrected, but fire officials said Monday they were investigating the extent of any additional violations.

Real estate records show that Ramirez sold his share of the building to Zamorano last December.

Zamorano said he was not aware of any fire code violations in the building and that new smoke detectors had been installed in each unit just last month. If there were any code violations, he added, they were the fault of tenants or vandals who break or steal safety equipment.

But residents said they lived in slum conditions, in units infested with cockroaches and mice. Many residents also said the common bathrooms were frequently used by addicts to smoke crack cocaine and inject drugs. Other people would drink on the roof and balcony, residents said.

“I complained to the manager, but she never did anything,” said Barbara Washington, who said she moved out of the building several months ago because of the problems.

Zamorano disagreed, saying, “We keep it pretty clean.”

The injured were treated at several hospitals.

At County-USC Medical Center, Juan Fuentes, 40, his daughter, Jessica Moreno, 14, and his son, Gerald, 2, were hospitalized as a result of burns and smoke inhalation. Another daughter, Rosa Moreno, 11, was treated and released.

A fifth victim was transferred to UC Irvine Medical Center.

Four of the fire victims were taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, including Pedro, who was in fair condition, and Melina Moreno, 25, and Rosario Angeles, 28, who were in critical condition. The fourth victim was not identified.

Martina Landa, 41, was in critical condition at the Sherman Oaks Community Hospital burn unit with third-degree burns over 20% of her body. A 9-year-old boy, Juan Jose Fuentes, was in critical condition there and on a respirator, suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.

At Northridge Hospital Medical Center, a boy of about 5 was in intensive care with smoke inhalation.

Another five victims were treated for smoke inhalation and released from White Memorial Hospital. A sixth, a 63-year-old man, was in critical condition there.

Nearly 50 people displaced by the fire registered to stay at a Red Cross shelter at Belmont High School. Disaster officials expected another 70 to check in before nightfall.

Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer, Jack Cheevers and Sonia Nazario contributed to this story.