Building Survey Widens Scope of Damage Area

While the tally of earthquake destruction mounted, officials on Thursday released preliminary reports showing that thousands of residences were left uninhabitable and the scope of major damage had spread far beyond the Northridge epicenter to South-Central Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Simi Valley.

Nearly two-thirds of the unsafe buildings in Los Angeles were homes, and the rest of the damage was spread among an array of structures, from churches and schools to auto repair shops and nightclubs, according to a report by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.

No type of building seemed to be spared. Brick apartments constructed in the 1920s on Hollywood Boulevard were battered. So was a 10-year-old Ventura Boulevard high-rise.

The report, based on inspections of only 1,239 buildings, found that 526 residential and commercial buildings in Los Angeles are uninhabitable and that damage totaled $213 million. Nearly 2,500 housing units were declared unsafe for occupancy.

Officials said the numbers will surely grow because they had tallied only the first third of more than 3,500 inspection reports and were continuing to assess damage across the city.

“We are finding much more damage then we thought there was,” said city building and safety official Karl Deppe, from his office Downtown. “We just didn’t think there would be this much damage on this side of the mountain.”

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The widespread and capricious nature of the destruction was coming into sharper focus in reports from a variety of communities. Inspectors in Santa Monica found that more than half of the 800 buildings they checked had to be vacated at least temporarily, while officials in nearby Malibu inspected just eight buildings and declared all “safe and sound.”

The Los Angeles city survey broke the uninhabitable buildings into two categories. Nearly 300 were marked with yellow tags, meaning owners and tenants were allowed to re-enter to retrieve possessions. Another 228 structures were marked with red tags indicating that they were too dangerous for even brief visits.

Wood-frame structures accounted for more than half of those declared unsafe, according to a review by Richard O’Reilly, Times director of computer analysis, and analyst Sandra Poindexter. But no type of structure appeared to be immune from problems, including the most modern concrete-and-steel buildings, which accounted for 7% of the buildings declared unsafe.

Apartments and single-family dwellings of all types of construction represented 63% of the unsafe buildings in the initial survey. Restaurants and retail stores accounted for 15%. Warehouses, parking garages and offices each accounted for roughly 5%.

Los Angeles officials said the initial assessment provided a measure of good news--indications that a 13-year-old program to strengthen masonry buildings is successful.

Of the 8,100 unreinforced masonry buildings in which the city ordered improvements in 1981, all but about 400 have been retrofitted. The work usually consists of attaching floors to foundations and ceilings to outer walls.

Officials said the attachments are designed merely to save lives, not to to prevent damage, by preventing floors from pancaking on top of each other.

Of the 89 brick buildings initially inspected by the city, the survey showed that 54 were ordered vacated by building officials--a high ratio. But retrofitting prevented the buildings from collapsing and causing deaths, officials said.

“I don’t know of any that collapsed in the entire city. It worked,” said Deppe, assistant chief of the Building and Safety Department’s emergency operations. “My feeling is that we could have lost quite a few people. (The retrofitting) saved a lot of lives.”

A second wave of more detailed surveys will be required for inspectors to determine which buildings must be demolished and which can be repaired. The required improvements will range from buttressing with steel beams to the reinstallation of staircases to provide safe exits.

Officials said the first round of statistics came mostly from inspections in the San Fernando Valley and from the most obviously damaged structures in the rest of the city.

With residents and business people still flooding hot lines with requests for inspections, the officials hoped to beef up their crew of 540 inspectors with another 100 today.

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Many of those inspectors are expected to be sent to neighborhoods outside the San Fernando Valley, to areas where some City Council members were complaining that their constituents are not receiving enough attention.

Councilman Nate Holden said his mid-Los Angeles district suffered tremendous damage that is not reflected in the report, which shows that 22 structures have been vacated, out of about 70 inspected.

He said that single-family dwellings, duplexes, apartment buildings, churches and commercial structures were hit hard and that people are begging him to send more inspectors. “There are a lot of problems in this area that people don’t even begin to know about yet,” Holden said.

Councilwoman Rita Walters concurred. “The extent of the problem is far greater in the Valley, but we do have serious problems in all of South-Central,” said Walters, whose district extends south from Downtown Los Angeles. “It needs to be recognized this is a problem for the total city.”

The survey showed that Councilman Hal Bernson’s district, which includes Northridge, had more buildings declared unsafe, 40, than any other ward in the city. There were 32 in Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg’s Hollywood-centered district.

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Twenty buildings were declared unsafe in City Councilman John Ferraro’s district, which extends from Hancock Park to North Hollywood, and 34 were declared unsafe in Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s district, which extends from the Westside to the Valley.

Goldberg said the damage in her district is much more severe than reflected by the building department’s report. Most buildings that were not vacated are nevertheless uninhabitable, she said, because of plumbing or electrical failures or fallen debris.

“These places may not be in imminent danger of collapsing during another jolt,” she said, “but people have moved out because they are unlivable.”

Said Rawn Nelson, president-elect of the Structural Engineers Assn. of California: “It’s not just one type of building that was damaged. They’re finding damage in all types of buildings.”

But, he added, “I’ve seen less serious damage in buildings engineered and built per newer codes.”

As building inspectors in the Valley continued their assessments Thursday, new pockets of damage continued to emerge.

Todd Brizi, a building inspector in the Valley, said he and a partner posted red “do not enter” stickers on an entire block of apartment buildings.

“They had in excess of 300 units,” Brizi said. “That’s 300 families. That’s sad.”

In some areas, one apartment complex after another was devastated by what appeared to be common problems. In at least five buildings along Victory Boulevard near Reseda Boulevard, the front units appeared damaged, with sagging patios, weakened walls and cracks.

But units behind the swimming pools were decimated. The apartments were built above carports, and when the thin concrete stilts collapsed, so did the apartments. Many residents, even though they could not retrieve their belongings, said they were glad just to be alive.

“When the supports for the garage fell, everything went over,” said Rae Talenfeld, 77, who lived in a front unit on Victory Boulevard with her sisters Sara and Netta, ages 88 and 83. “The building just separated.”

On West Adams Boulevard, miles from the epicenter, more red tags could be seen every few blocks on buildings stretching from Fairfax Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard. Among the churches declared unsafe were Messiah Baptist Church and Southern Missionary Baptist Church.

“We’re going to tear it down and rebuild,” said Pastor Joe Gates of Southern Missionary. “It’s a total loss.”

An apartment building at Figueroa Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard also had been deemed uninhabitable. It was cracked along its walls and foundation.

The residents had strung sheets from a fence to make a crude tent in the parking lot. Underneath, a bed lay on the asphalt, and a mother fed her baby.

“That was all we had,” said a 44-year-old woman, motioning to the two-story brick apartment. “Maybe we should go to a park.”

Hollywood Boulevard was hard hit, especially between Western and Normandie avenues. Along that stretch, about 15 sites were deemed unsafe. All were brick and two to four stories tall.

Assessments of damage around the rest of the Southland were beginning to come into sharper focus Thursday:

* In Santa Monica, a little more than half of the 800 buildings inspected were ordered vacated at least for the time being, with limited entry to some to permit recovery of possessions. “The majority of the damaged buildings have had unreinforced masonry, and we’ve had lots of problems with chimneys,” said Fred Harris, a spokesman for Santa Monica’s Emergency Operations Center.

Building owners must initiate their own engineering reports and repairs before their buildings can be approved for habitation.

* In Culver City, about 30 buildings were closed, almost all of them unreinforced brick structures.

* In Ventura County, 6,000 residences were reported damaged and 1,000 of those were homes declared at least temporarily unsafe. About 250 businesses were at least temporarily closed by moderate to extensive damage. Eighty percent of those were in the Simi Valley area. Three schools, including Simi Valley High School, may not be reopened. And the roof of the Thousand Oaks main library fell in.

* In the city of San Fernando, 22% of the housing stock for 23,500 residents was deemed uninhabitable. The northeast Valley city reported 63 buildings destroyed and 835 damaged, a loss exceeding $31 million, officials said Thursday.

The county courthouse in the city may be closed for six months.

* In Burbank, city officials had declared 16 buildings uninhabitable. They allowed residents of 21 buildings limited entry to obtain possessions. More than half of the 1,000 requests for inspections had been completed by Thursday afternoon.

* In Calabasas, inspectors declared 12 units uninhabitable after checking about 1,000.

* In Pasadena, 40 businesses were damaged and two apartment buildings on Marengo Avenue were shut down. Total damage was placed at $2 million.

* In Redondo Beach, officials reported that the King Harbor Marina suffered about $4 million in damage.

Buildings Declared Unsafe

Los Angeles city officials have inspected more than 3,500 buildings since Monday’s earthquake. The results of more than 1,200 inspections have been tabulated and they show that nearly two-thirds of the buildings declared unsafe are residential structures.

Type Number Percent Houses 58 22% Apartment 86 33% Duplex 7 3% Condo 14 5% School 1 0.4% Church 1 0.4% Manufacturing 3 1% Office 17 7% Retail Store 36 14% Restaurant 3 1% Parking Garage 13 5% Warehouse 13 5% Other 4 3%

Source: City of Los Angeles--Department of Building and Safety

Compiled by: Richard O’Reilly, Times director of computer analysis, and data analyst Sandra Poindexter

Other Damage Estimates

City or County: Agoura Hills Damage: None condemned Estimates: $150,000

City or County: Burbank Damage: 37 structures declared unsafe Estimates: NA

City or County: Calabasas Damage: 12 residences declared unsafe Estimates: More than $325,000

City or County: El Segundo Damage: None condemned Estimates: $100,000

City or County: Glendale Damage: 31 structures declared unsafe Estimates: $15 million

City or County: Inglewood Damage: Broken windows, cleanup costs Estimates: $114,000

City or County: Manhattan Beach Damage: NA Estimates: $1.7 million

City or County: Pasadena Damage: Several apartment complexes condemned Estimates: $2 million

City or County: Pomona Damage: No major structural damage Estimates: $100,000

City or County: Redondo Beach Damage: Damage at King Harbor Marina Estimates: $4 million

City or County: San Fernando Damage: 63 buildings destroyed; 835 damaged Estimates: $31 million

City or County: Ventura County Damage: 6,000 residences damaged, 1,000 uninhabitable, 250 businesses closed Estimates: NA

Compiled by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times