Hauling of Trash Back on Schedule : Services: Sixty-six of the city’s 415 trucks have been yanked from service after fatal accident. Expert hired to inspect vehicles cites design and structural flaws.

Trash pickup throughout Los Angeles was on schedule Monday for the first time since a Dec. 6 accident that killed two third-graders, but 66 of the city’s 415 trucks have been yanked from service because their compactors have severe cracks that could trigger problems such as the one that caused the deadly crash.

The trucks have been grounded until they are fitted with new packer blades from Ontario-based manufacturer Amrep Corp. and should be back on the street by the end of January, city officials said at a packed news conference, unveiling a critical report by an independent metallurgist hired to investigate the trash truck fleet.

“Nothing ever guarantees not having another accident, but nothing will be let out on the road unless [it’s] structurally sound,” Mayor Richard Riordan said. “No truck will be let out unless we are confident that the truck is safe.”

Metallurgist Michael Neff of Seal Laboratories in El Segundo displayed color photographs of the fleet’s damaged trucks as he offered a complicated technical analysis of what went wrong with truck No. 70. The problem started with a 15-inch crack in the packer blade and ended when the hydraulic pistons that power the compactor shot through the side of the truck and then sliced into a passing school bus.

Neff--who will be paid $165 an hour for his nearly around-the-clock work since the accident--criticized the design, construction and welding of the Amrep trucks, and said the systemic problems of stress fractures in the moving parts could not be detected without removing and steam-cleaning the packer blades. The city now plans to do that every 90 days.

“Although better quality welds would have increased the lifetime of the structure, weld quality alone is probably not the only requirement,” Neff wrote in his report. “Redesign or modification of the structure of the packer body may be required.”

The city has an ongoing contract with Amrep and is expecting 104 more automated trucks from the company over the next year. Department of General Services Director Randall C. Bacon said Monday that Neff has assured the city “we do not need to fear with those trucks.”

Since the crash, Neff and a team of mechanics from the city and Amrep have inspected the entire fleet and grounded hundreds of truck for removal, repair or replacement of the packer blade. Many were salvaged through extensive welding, though 66 were too far gone to be saved, Neff said. Much of the fleet also is being retrofitted with metal gussets to reinforce the welds at high-pressure points.

Riordan and City Council members Richard Alarcon, who chairs the Public Works Committee, and Jackie Goldberg, who represents the neighborhood near the crash, called for long-range improvements in the maintenance operation. Fleet services has come under harsh criticism since the crash because it was a supervisor’s error that allowed the ill-fated truck to go out on the road after a driver had flagged the problem and because two previous instances of pistons bursting through trucks did not spark widespread concern.

“This [accident] proved that the system was defective. Reports of the problems were not passed on to the heads of departments,” Riordan said. “You always have to be observant. It can happen any time. That’s why you have to have procedures in place. You cannot trust any one human being.”

Since the accident, the city has made a number of policy changes, including red-tagging problem vehicles on their dashboards, prohibiting drivers from running the compactor while traveling from their routes to the yard or landfill, increasing drivers’ responsibility to check that maintenance has been performed and requiring mechanics to report serious failures to their bosses.

In other developments Monday, a second lawyer filed claims against the city on behalf of the families of two of the crash victims, and Riordan received the first results of an audit of the city fleet, recommending a series of safety improvements for the tractors and mowers used by the Recreation and Parks Department.

Attorney Gordon D. Soledar demanded $88 million from the city in his claims--official precursors to lawsuits--on behalf of Maria Serrano, whose son Brian was one of the two boys killed in the crash, and Rosario Serrano, mother of Mario Garay, who suffered a fractured skull but survived. Brian was Mario’s cousin.

Similar claims were filed previously by attorney Steven A. Lerman, who said Monday that the duplicate legal papers were a mix-up: “That’s completely bizarre. There’s been some confusion. He can’t get them as clients--they’re my clients.”

Soledar could not be reached for comment Monday, and his assistant said, “We have no comment at this time because it seems that our clients have retained other attorneys.”

Jesse Serrano, a cousin of both boys’ mothers, said his family is still represented by Lerman.

Mario suffers from headaches and is being cared for by a nurse 24 hours a day, he said.

“If the city had been careful with its inspections and stricter with its laws, this tragedy would not have happened,” Jesse Serrano said. “If the supervisors had done their job, this whole thing could have been avoided.”

The parents of Francisco Mata, the other boy killed in the crash, said they plan to look into litigation after the new year.

“Right now we can’t decide anything. Right now we are just trying to cope with his death,” said his mother, Luz Maria Mata. “I don’t think we are ready to start thinking about money and lawyers. It won’t change the fact that my child is gone.

“It will take a long time to heal,” she added. “I keep calling his name when I am calling the other children.”

While most of the city’s attention is focused on safety improvements for garbage trucks, Riordan wrote to Recreation and Parks Department Director Jackie Tatum on Friday to pass on recommendations of the consultant studying the city’s 21,000-vehicle fleet.

In a letter summarizing the consultant’s preliminary report, the mayor called for “immediate action on the foregoing problems . . . to forestall future safety problems for city employees or citizens.”

Some of the problems cited echo those raised since the incident, such as the lack of written logs to record mechanical defects, drivers’ lax pre-trip inspections and cleaning of equipment, substandard repair facilities, inadequate training of operators, and unsafe fueling stations.

Riordan notes in his letter that the department “has not recently had any serious accidents [but] it has seen in the past one death and several serious injuries.”

The $364,000 report on the Recreation and Parks’ fleet and six other city fleets--including the garbage trucks--is scheduled to be completed in March.

Times staff writers Lorenza Munoz and James Rainey contributed to this article.