Officials Assail State Over Bridge Retrofitting Pace

The pace of safeguarding California’s vulnerable freeway bridges from earthquakes has been dangerously slow and should be put on an emergency course, even if taxes must be raised, federal, state and local elected officials said Wednesday.

“This state knew darn well in 1989 that, without question, we had dangerous structures out there and that they had to be retrofitted,” said U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) “There’s no excuse for this.”

Boxer and other officials said that state government, particularly the Administration of Gov. Pete Wilson, bears responsibility for not getting the job done faster. Many officials, including three Democratic candidates for governor, said they would support a temporary increase in either the state sales or gasoline tax to help pay for safeguarding the bridges.

The calls for action followed a Times report Wednesday revealing that about 80% of the state’s 1,313 bridges identified as being vulnerable to earthquakes have not been repaired.

Appointees of Wilson say that retrofitting of the bridges has moved as quickly as possible, in light of the complexities and scope of the task. The governor has said he opposes any tax increase to pay for retrofitting but might favor placing an earthquake-related bond issue before voters.

Wilson, commenting in San Francisco, said that he believes most of the vulnerable bridges have been retrofitted but that new highway projects should be slowed if necessary, to speed the program.

“I think that we ought to put a greater emphasis upon completion of retrofit projects,” Wilson said.

Wilson was referring to progress in retrofitting the state’s 259 bridges that are supported by single concrete columns. The state has moved to fix those before repairing the 1,056 bridges that are supported by clusters of columns. Both types of bridges failed in the Northridge earthquake--and now officials say that retrofitting of the cluster-column bridges must be accelerated.

Only 2% of the cluster-column structures have been strengthened so far, records show. Some of these spans are located at the most heavily traveled freeway junctures and pose the highest seismic risk of any of the state’s overpasses, according to engineering calculations made by the California Department of Transportation.

After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which collapsed parts of four San Francisco Bay Area freeways and killed 43 motorists, Caltrans identified about 1,300 overpasses statewide in need of retrofitting. The Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake collapsed six freeway bridges in Los Angeles County--including five that had been identified as vulnerable but had not been retrofitted.

The Times reported Wednesday:

* In Los Angeles County, 84% of 716 bridges designated for retrofitting remain unrepaired.

* Caltrans has spent less than a third of the $300 million per year that officials had estimated would be used for shoring up bridges.

* A small share of the billions of dollars from a new gasoline tax has been spent on bridge repairs--although seismic retrofitting was supposed to be a major beneficiary.

* Just three days before the earthquake, the director of Caltrans, James W. Van Loben Sels, halted the hiring of outside engineering consultants who have performed nearly half the design work for bridge retrofitting. Van Loben Sels’ decision was made because of cost concerns, according to a spokesman.

* Overruling his chief bridge engineer, Van Loben Sels has declined to seek emergency powers that would streamline contracting for retrofitting.

The decisions by Van Loben Sels, an appointee of Wilson, to halt the hiring of outside engineers and to reject emergency contracting procedures were wrong and should be reversed, the Republican leader of the state Assembly, Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, said Wednesday.

A spokesman for Caltrans, Jim Drago, said the department’s own engineers can shoulder the extra workload without delays.

“We certainly don’t think the firing squad is in order here,” Drago said. “We recognize Assemblyman Brulte’s frustration at the pace of retrofitting. Director Van Loben Sels’ commitment is to get the work done as quickly as possible and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

Another Republican, Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, whose San Fernando Valley district was heavily damaged by the quake, declined to place blame but said the retrofitting of the bridges should be accelerated.

“There’s no question that these things should have been done,” said Bernson, who also serves on the California Seismic Safety Commission as an appointee of Wilson. “. . . We’ve got a ton of work to do to get ready for the next one.”

Three Democratic candidates for governor--state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and state Sen. Tom Hayden of Santa Monica--said Wednesday that the retrofitting of the bridges will be an issue in the campaign.

“They are late; there is no explanation that is satisfactory,” Hayden said of Caltrans’ failure to complete the retrofitting of bridges at high seismic risk. “. . . They are not on top of the situation. If they were doctors, they would be sued for malpractice.” Hayden said he would support a temporary quarter-cent sales tax increase to pay for retrofitting and other quake-related repairs.

Garamendi was more critical of Wilson, calling the failure to retrofit bridges at a faster pace “a horrible example of awful leadership. . . . It is alarming. We absolutely know we’re going to have an earthquake. And we know (some of) those bridges are going to collapse in an earthquake.”

Garamendi said he supports temporarily increasing the state sales and gas taxes to pay for retrofitting.

A spokesman for Brown blamed Wilson’s management approach. “At every turn and in every crisis, (Wilson) tends to respond with bureaucratic thinking,” said Brown’s aide, Michael Reese. “That tends to lead to bureaucratic paralysis.”

Reese said that Brown supports raising the sales tax by a quarter-cent, for a maximum of 17 months, to pay for retrofitting.

Sen. Boxer, meanwhile, said she would introduce legislation in Washington to force California and other states to report their progress in safeguarding bridges and roadways.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who also was in Los Angeles on Wednesday, said that she too favors a temporary increase of the state sales tax--if the money is spent solely for retrofitting and other quake-related needs. “Retrofitting should be done more rapidly,” Feinstein said.

In Sacramento, the heads of the Legislature’s two transit committees said that they also support raising the sales tax temporarily to pay for retrofitting.

Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said the bridge repairs have proceeded too slowly. Kopp criticized Wilson for blocking Kopp’s effort to impose a gas tax surcharge in the early 1990s to pay for retrofitting. Without that revenue, Kopp said, the retrofitting program has had to compete funding with newly proposed highway projects.

Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who chairs the Assembly Transportation Committee, called for completion of bridge retrofitting “even if no new roads are built in the state.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, a Democrat who also is chairman of the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority, called for Wilson to “put the welfare and safety of the people over” his reluctance to support a temporary sales tax increase.

“That’s the price of leadership,” Alatorre said.

Times staff writers Richard Lee Colvin, Virginia Ellis, Dave Lesher, Jeffrey L. Rabin and Claire Spiegel contributed to this report. Gladstone reported from San Francisco; Ellis from Sacramento.

* GORE VISITS CSUN: In Northridge, Vice President Al Gore says U.S. will “go all out” to aid damaged campus. B3