Earthquake: The Long Road Back : 2 Arrested Inside Collapsed Apartments : Crime: They’re charged with illegally entering Northridge Meadows complex. A witness says he saw two men trying to remove a TV set.

Police arrested two men Friday morning for illegally entering the condemned Northridge Meadows Apartments complex. Officers said that although the men were not caught taking anything from the quake-devastated building, they had no business there.

A construction worker saw Timothy Loughton, 24, who lives down the street from Northridge Meadows, and Mark Walters, 22, of Van Nuys, inside the structure and alerted police, said Devonshire Capt. Bruce Crosley.

Loughton told police he was a former resident of the building, which was untrue, Crosley said.

“It’s possible they were looters, but we charged them with entering a condemned building,” Crosley said. “They had no business to be in there, and it’s fenced and well-posted.”

But relatives of those who lived in the building, which collapsed during the quake and killed 16 people, pointed to several spots where the 6-foot-high fence was broken or where people could make their way inside.

Ryan Dunn, 18, ignored warning signs Friday and walked across a wood plank at a break in the fence to get inside the structure and check on his parents’ belongings in Apartment 25.

“I walked right through there; anyone could just come in,” Dunn said. “It’s wrong if you come back for your last memories and they’re gone.”

Crosley said police have been assigned to the building around the clock, although at midday Friday none were visible to Dunn and others who wandered in and around the yellow police tape.

Tim Fitak of Northridge said he was videotaping the structure when he saw two men trying to take a television set out of the building and down a ladder. “They didn’t get much out of there . . . because they couldn’t figure out how to get it down the ladder,” he said.

“The saddest thing is that the police prevent the tenants from going in and getting their belongings,” Fitak said. “They tell them the places are guarded, and they aren’t.”

Crosley said there have been no reports of looting at the apartments, and only a few such reports elsewhere in the city.

“I don’t know how we could guard every red-tagged (condemned) facility,” Crosley said. “We do our best.”