City Investigating Delays in Fire Safety Reforms : Regulations: Measures sought after Pico/Westlake blaze would focus on making landlords more accountable. Council orders housing officials to explain lack of progress.

Sweeping fire safety reforms ordered by the City Council in the wake of a fatal apartment house fire last year have been mired in the city bureaucracy for at least six months, although most would cost little, if anything, to implement, city officials confirmed Friday.

Frustrated with the lack of progress on several reforms to improve the fire safety of apartment buildings, City Council members recently ordered top city housing officials to return with a report explaining “the reasons for delay, and the time frame for accomplishing the work.”

One measure would allow city building officials to sanction landlords who put their tenants in jeopardy by not maintaining the proper fire safety equipment.

A separate set of reforms proposed by the Fire Department also has not been implemented after an arson blaze that killed 10 residents at 330 S. Burlington Ave. last May.

“I am impatient that we are not moving fast enough and hard enough to make sure these buildings are . . . brought up to a standard of being clean, safe and sanitary,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who sponsored the motion ordering housing officials to account for the lack of progress. “We need to get all this done at once.”

*

The Times reported Thursday that another set of reform measures proposed by fire officials, such as plans for a fire safety inspection task force and a computerized safety record system, have not been implemented despite being proposed a year ago. Even cameras to document violations, and file cabinets to store new records, have not been purchased.

Fire officials said they have been hamstrung by budget cuts and other priorities.

But on Friday, a city fire commissioner questioned that response, and said he plans to ask fire officials why they have not acted on those proposed reforms.

“I am outraged by the snail’s pace approach that the Fire Department is taking,” said commission member Larry Gonzalez. “I intend to bring this up at our next commission meeting. Things aren’t getting done.”

Gonzalez said fire officials have not made the issue a high enough priority, and that he did not agree with the Fire Department’s position that budget constraints are to blame.

“I don’t buy that argument whatsoever,” said Gonzalez, who was appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan two months ago. “This is an emergency situation where many of these people are unsafe.”

Meanwhile, Goldberg and other city officials have quietly expressed frustration at the lack of progress on the City Hall-based initiatives giving new authority to building officials.

Officials said the proposals are an important weapon in the effort to prevent so-called “fire trap” buildings because they focus on making landlords accountable for conditions in their buildings, which frequently lack fire extinguishers and fire hoses and have broken or locked fire escapes. Fire officials have conceded that they are too understaffed to police the buildings day and night, and that it is up to the property owners to maintain them.

On May 18, the council, acting on Goldberg’s motion, ordered that officials of the city housing department appear before the council’s Housing and Community Redevelopment Committee to answer questions as to why none of the reforms have been implemented.

*

The fire safety plan, approved by the council Dec. 21, called for progress reports starting in mid-January, but none have been forwarded, according to Ralph R. Esparza, head of the housing department’s rent stabilization division.

Esparza said the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake has been the primary reason why the improvements have not been implemented. He added that some improvements would take changes in city ordinances and further study.

But Esparza acknowledged that the improvements are desperately needed to help protect the residents of the city’s densely populated urban areas like Pico Union/Westlake, where the fire occurred. He said he expects to have a progress report by the time he appears before the council’s housing committee June 6.

“We need a concentrated effort to target recalcitrant property owners with the various initiatives (we) either have in place or are pursuing,” Esparza said. “We were working on it when the earthquake hit, but since then all our resources were tied up. In recent weeks we have tried to put these initiatives back on track.”

One measure calls for expanding and strengthening two low-income housing programs by allowing city housing department officials to swiftly withhold rent monies from landlords who do not maintain critically important fire safety equipment.

At present, apartment building owners can be penalized for building and safety violations under the Rent Escrow Account Program and the Rent Reduction Program, but they cannot be penalized for fire safety problems.

“The Burlington Avenue fire provided a tragic and graphic illustration of the need to strengthen both of these pioneering programs,” according to a motion made by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky last year, after The Times reported that many buildings in the Pico/Westlake area had serious fire safety violations. “Other changes can be made . . . that will dramatically assist in our efforts to abate slum housing citywide.”

*

The council also ordered officials of the city’s housing, building and safety, and fire departments to “develop a plan for overall coordination of the city’s slum abatement programs.” Critics have said a lack of coordination among the agencies fostered a system of lax oversight of fire prevention programs.

To make landlords more accountable, Esparza said his department is considering a system of licensing property managers, creating some type of “housing court” and getting the authority to place slum buildings into receivership--where they would be taken from their owners if problems persist.

Some apartment managers told The Times that they must padlock doors--a fire safety violation--to keep the homeless and gang members out. Some managers blame tenants for violations, saying they deactivate fire alarms when frying food, and some steal the fire extinguishers.

Deputy City Atty. Richard M. Bobb, head of the city’s multi-agency slum housing task force, said such excuses often come from landlords who do not want to spend the time and money keeping up their buildings.