‘Mr. Earthquake’ and the Lives Not Lost : With quake safety back on the front burner, Bernson now hopes to see these quake programs restored. He also hopes for new ordinances . . .

To look at City Hall, you’d think that Los Angeles is in a state of official mourning. The flag is not at half-mast but, nearly one month after the quake that claimed 61 lives, the upper floors of the white landmark tower remain wrapped in a kind of black band.

This is actually nylon netting hung to catch crumbling chunks of facade--an expression not of grief but prudence.

We practice prudence so we don’t have to practice grief. And though much has been said about how lucky Los Angeles was that the Northridge earthquake struck while the city was sleeping, how the death toll would have been far greater, it’s also true that some prudent quake codes adopted in the last decade probably saved many lives Jan. 17.

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In normal times, seismic safety isn’t sexy politics. But then Councilman Hal Bernson isn’t a sexy politician. If you are familiar with the Jeff MacNelly comic strip “Pluggers,” suffice to say that Hal Bernson is a plugger. But if any politician deserves credit for making L. A. semi-ready when the earth moves, it’s Bernson.

It was ironic, then, that Bernson’s district would be hit harder than any of his colleagues’. As one veteran council aide put it: “He’s Mr. Earthquake.”

Inside the vaulted chamber of the City Council one recent day, downing a quick sandwich while waiting to chair a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Earthquake Recovery, Bernson remembered on the happenstance that helped make him City Hall’s champion of quake preparedness.

The year was 1979. Freshman council members, as Bernson was at the time, are not given plum committee assignments. “You’re assigned to committees where we’d get in the least amount of trouble.” Bernson was made chairman of the Building and Safety Committee, considered something of a yawner.

Then Bernson stumbled upon some measures that were proposed after the Sylmar earthquake in ‘71, but never enacted. One would require the seismic strengthening of all buildings constructed of unreinforced masonry. Engineers agreed that these old brick structures were potential death traps in a major quake. With seismologists warning that the San Andreas could rupture any time, Bernson decided to push for this ordinance.

At City Hall, where some council members do little more than fix potholes or posture, and some just seem to posture, this is no small matter. More than 8,000 buildings in the city of Los Angeles would be affected, very few of which were within Bernson’s northwest Valley district. Property owners lobbied hard, saying the cost of retrofitting their buildings was prohibitive. Some apartment owners bused in elderly tenants to testify that their rents would go up and they’d be out on the street if such a law was passed.

Bernson, a conservative who is considered friendly to business and property owners, didn’t blink. He pushed through the ordinance--a tribute to perseverance. “His seismic safety law is . . . a very serious accomplishment,” Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said of Bernson in a 1991 interview. “If he did nothing else, he could be proud of this.”

Bernson, who has served on the state Seismic Safety Commission, has championed other quake laws and pushed for the creation of annual quake drills. Budget cutbacks in recent years have eliminated some of these programs. “But,” Bernson adds, “the fact is the city was very well-prepared for this. That’s why we responded so well.”

With quake safety back on the front burner, Bernson now hopes to see these quake programs restored. He also hopes for new ordinances that would require the reinforcement of wood-frame structures and thus minimize the possibility of another deadly disaster like Northridge Meadows.

Already, landlords have warned Bernson’s quake committee that new ordinances would make it too expensive to do business. Greig Smith, Bernson’s chief deputy, remembers a once-angry Sherman Oaks landlord.

“He said, ‘If you force me to do some of these things, I’m not going to rebuild. It costs too much!’ To which Hal said, ‘What is the cost of a life?’

“It was a poignant comment and it just kind of shut him up.”

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Did the retrofitting of unreinforced masonry buildings save lives?

“What if?” is always a tricky question. Larry Brugger, chief of the earthquake safety division in the city’s Building and Safety Department, thinks it may have. Back in the early ‘80s, 8,093 buildings were placed in the program. Owners decided to demolish rather than retrofit 1,617 of those buildings. Another 5,708 were strengthened; of the rest, more than 200 have the work under way and another 500 have yet to comply. According to a Bernson aide, the retrofitted structures included 1,300 apartment buildings that contained 37,000 units and may house more than 200,000 people, given the crowded tenements of Hollywood and Pico-Union.

Several masonry buildings, reinforced and not, were damaged in the quake. No lives were lost in these structures.

The story might have been very different if not for the prudent measure that a freshman councilman discovered, dusted off and pushed into law.

Were it not for that, Brugger suggests, then maybe, just maybe, some of those old brick buildings would have collapsed like so many chimneys.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca. 91311.