40,000 Kingdome Tiles to Come Down : Stadium: The facility will be closed indefinitely. The cost is unknown.

All 40,000 of the Kingdome’s precarious ceiling tiles will be pulled down, and the Kingdome will be closed indefinitely, county officials said Saturday.

It’s not known how long the job will take, what the tiles will be replaced with, or how much it will cost.

“We will bust our butts to get the Kingdome open,” King County Executive Gary Locke said after a news conference Saturday. “But our primary obligation is to ensure the safety of the team and the fans.”

More should be known by Monday, said Locke’s spokesman, Frank Abe.

Four tiles fell from the Kingdome ceiling into the stands Tuesday afternoon, forcing the Mariners to postpone two scheduled games with Baltimore and move a scheduled Boston-Seattle home stand to Fenway Park in Boston.

“This is the only solution that will assure patrons that absolutely no tiles will fall on them,” said Jim Napolitano, projects manager for the King County Department of Construction and Facilities Management. “This is the only absolutely safe method.”

Crews began stripping the aging, water-damaged tiles off early Saturday morning and had removed about one-third of one of the Kingdome’s 40 roof sections by mid-afternoon, exposing the bare, gray concrete underneath.

The Kingdome could be reopened as soon as the 26-pound tiles are removed, Napolitano said. The tiles serve no structural purpose.

“The concrete is ugly, if nothing else,” he said. The county is considering covering the concrete with cloth, a sprayed-on material, among other options, for insulation and acoustics, Napolitano said.

Locke said he will ask the Metropolitan King County Council on Monday to approve an emergency ordinance allowing the county to waive normal bid requirements to make the needed repairs and “address potential safety problems.”

The contractor will have three crews working around the clock and at least two more cranes will be added Monday to the one currently erected inside the Kingdome, Abe said.

“It shouldn’t be too bad, they’re coming out fairly fast,” Napolitano said.

The 18-year-old tiles were bound to fall sooner or later, said Robert LaFraugh, the Seattle branch manager of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, the forensics engineering company investigating the problem.

“These 40,000 tiles represent 40,000 potential sources of failure,” he said. “This is a systemic problem, not a localized problem.”