High-Rise Workers Steel Themselves as Towers of Power Shake

Nowadays around the earthquake-rattled San Fernando Valley, working in a building made of steel may require nerves of the same material. That, or a small dose of denial.

A combination of both works for Chris Hickman.

“I can’t visualize this whole building collapsing,” said a slightly apprehensive Hickman, his eyes roaming the walls of the deli where he works on the bottom floor of one of the twin 18-story towers at Warner Center.

“But having said that,” Hickman continued briskly with a shrug, “life goes on.”

And so it does for thousands of employees in steel-frame buildings across Los Angeles, even though at least 50 such structures--once thought invulnerable to Mother Nature’s tantrums--have sprouted cracks in their skeletons since the Northridge earthquake.

Officials have grown concerned enough about the damage that the Los Angeles City Council last week gave notice that it will order inspections of 400 steel-frame buildings throughout the Valley and the West Side, the two areas of the city hardest hit by the temblor.

But concern over the potential weaknesses in steel-frame buildings seems greater in the halls of officialdom than in the corridors of the buildings themselves, where the 9-to-5 life barely pauses and the gossip at the water cooler has returned to the subject of office intrigue rather than office stability.

“What can you do? You have to make a living,” said Evelyn Casillas, who works with the Greater Valley Medical Group in a steel-frame building in Mission Hills.

“I put it out of my mind. I’d rather not think about it,” Casillas said of the internal damage to her Rinaldi Street office building, whose owners have notified the city of their intent to repair cracks in the frame.

A similar outlook can be found in the offices stacked one upon the other in the Warner Center towers in Woodland Hills. The complex’s parking structure was heavily damaged in the quake, and workers in some suites detected hairline cracks in their walls once the overturned file cabinets, shattered wall hangings, fallen plaster and smashed computers were uprighted or cleared away.

From 5% to 10% of the joints in the steel-frame twin towers were fractured in the quake, a statistic Doris Prouty banishes from her thoughts at her desk on the 17th floor--just below the crown of one of the buildings.

“If I thought about it, it would be too hard to come to work every day. I don’t know if that’s the best way to deal with it,” said Prouty, a program secretary with the California Wellness Foundation. “I keep thinking, ‘We’ve had the Big One, and there won’t be another one for 20 years.’ ”

Besides, the tower held up far better compared to her Northridge house, which was virtually destroyed in the quake. Indeed, some Warner Center employees say, the fact that the high-rise is still standing, and that 90% of the joints came through without incident, is enough reassurance.

“If it can withstand that big an earthquake, it can withstand just about anything,” said Hope Shankle, a production analyst with an insurance company on the sixth floor.

“I feel safer here than at home, and we’re on the 16th floor,” said Jodie Atkinson during a break from her job as an accounts-payable supervisor for the Windsor Capital Group. “Maybe it’s the sight-unseen kind of thing. You don’t see” the joint damage.

Caretakers of the Warner Center towers say repairs to the two high-rises--known as the Trillium--have been under way for several weeks and should be completed by the end of the month.

“We basically have just a few more weld repairs to make, and we will be done. We’ve been more pro-active than most owners in discovering whether (we) had any of that damage,” said Mike Krier of Equitable Real Estate Investment Management in Irvine, the asset manager for the towers.

To fix the joints, workers must burrow into walls and above ceilings. Some owners of damaged buildings fear that the cost of inspections and repairs--which can require the use of ultrasonic equipment--may be prohibitive.

“It’s not cheap,” agreed Krier, who declined to disclose how much the Trillium repairs have cost.

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In recent years, steel frames have become popular with architects and builders because they are designed to bend without breaking in earthquakes.

Sure enough, despite cracks in some buildings, no steel-frame structure came close to collapsing in the Jan. 17 temblor.

But total faith in steel is another item on the list of things shaken by the quake for Hickman, the deli employee. A structural engineer by training in his native England, Hickman moved to the United States to be with his fiancee just a few months before the Pretty Big One.

“I know what the joints are like. I assumed they were all right,” Hickman said. “To visualize cracks in the steel is kind of terrifying.”