Block Blames Human Error in Mass Escape : Jailbreak: Sheriff tells county supervisors how 14 inmates fled Castaic facility. The board approves $200,000 to shore up security.

Sheriff Sherman Block told the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that human error contributed to the escape of 14 inmates from a maximum-security jail, then asked for money to beef up fences and add security alarms.

“Certainly there was some human failure, and there (were) structural deficiencies,” said Block, who acknowledged that the escape early Sunday from the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic--the largest jailbreak in county history--has been an embarrassment.

The board agreed to spend $200,000 on Block’s request.

Block had been asked by the board to explain the breach in security as sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement agencies continued searching for two inmates--including a convicted killer--still at large. Sheriff’s deputies concentrated their search at housing tracts in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Block said the inmates were able to escape through a hole in a dormitory ceiling that had been covered with an oversized piece of sheet metal by maintenance crews. The prisoners were able to pry the metal loose and widen the hole over several days without being detected.

“This was just human error and miscalculating,” Block said after the board meeting. The sheet of metal “was too large, and it shouldn’t have been.”

The inmates had devised a series of hand signs to signal when the lone deputy assigned to guard the 96 inmates in the dorm was looking away, Block said. The deputy on guard the night of the jailbreak was completing paperwork as, one by one, the 14 inmates crept through the hole to an air duct, which led to the roof.

The inmates, using a piece of wood left behind by construction workers, had spent three days loosening steel bars guarding the air vent leading to the roof, Block said. Once outside, the inmates scaled a 16-foot razor-wire fence to escape.

Block also blamed overcrowding at the facility, which was built for 700 inmates but houses 1,600. “The bunks are literally clear to the ceiling,” he said.

That enabled the inmates to move in and out of the hole without catching the attention of guards, Block said. The hole, which was located at the farthest possible point from the guard station in the dorm, has since been repaired.

Block said some of the inmates had spent enough time at the jail--in some cases as much as two years--to figure out ways to escape. The inmates, Block said, “detected the slightest chink in our armor.”

To avoid another jailbreak, Block requested $176,000 to add additional razor wire to the existing fence and roof, as well as an alarm system for the fence and video cameras. The Sheriff’s Department had asked the board for many of those items in past years but had been denied, he said.

“We need to work toward zero tolerance as far as prison escapes are concerned,” Block said.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested 10 inmates Sunday within hours of their escape. Two more were arrested Monday, one within a mile of the jail and another at a hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

Court-ordered probation reports obtained Tuesday show that the two men who remain at large have previously been arrested on suspicion of burglary and auto theft.

Both had been sentenced to state prison just days before the Sunday morning escape. Walter Ramos Padilla, 22, was sentenced Friday to seven years for a carjacking. Luis Armando Galdamez, 28, was sentenced Thursday to 11 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Galdamez, a father of two who used the nickname “Lizard,” shot and killed two teen-agers in separate incidents with a 9-mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol stolen from a Los Angles police officer’s car on Jan. 17, 1992.

Galdamez’s first victim, 17-year-old William Valenzuela, was shot a dozen times Oct. 30, 1992, after a confrontation with Galdamez. The second, 16-year-old Jose Otis Benavides, exchanged gunfire with Galdamez, then fled after running out of bullets.

Witnesses told police that Benavides was lying wounded in the intersection of Crandall and Valley streets when Galdamez walked up and shot him twice in the head.

“He is a coldblooded killer, with no regard for the personal and property rights of others, and will continue to shoot and kill if allowed to return to the street,” said Deputy Probation Officer Alexander Peace in Galdamez’s probation report from May, 1994.

Court records show that Padilla served as the driver in a carjacking Jan. 18 in the Wilshire area. According to Padilla’s probation report, the victim was forced out of his car at gunpoint when he parked near his apartment shortly before 4 a.m. Padilla was driving when police pulled the car over about an hour later.

Padilla, a native of Colima, Mexico, first entered the United States illegally in 1987, and during the past four years had served terms in state prison and been deported twice, records show.

On Tuesday, the district attorney’s office filed charges against three inmates who escaped over the weekend but were later caught. Michael J. Tirpac, 19; Jose Antonio Santa Maria, 28, and Zoe Lee Issac, 23, each were charged with one count of escape from jail, which carries a maximum term of three years in prison.

Deputies caught the three, who were awaiting trial on murder charges, as they scaled a fence in their underwear.

Charges are expected to be filed later in the week against eight other inmates who were recaptured.