Valley Perspective : Paying Dearly for Inaction : City repairs might have prevented deaths on treacherous curve

We’ll never know whether a few simple street repairs on La Tuna Canyon Road might have saved the life of Rafeek Teraberanyans. The same question haunts the deaths of four other people who died in separate rain-related accidents on the same treacherous curve of the road, east of Sun Valley.

The five deaths cannot be written off as careless driving in poor weather. Los Angeles officials have known since at least 1970 that drainage on the curve near Elben Avenue is substandard. It floods during rainstorms and vehicles hydroplane out of control, even at normally safe speeds.

Yet despite 17 head-on collisions, five deaths and three lawsuits over 20 years, city officials did nothing. Last Wednesday, the City Council approved the largest payout involving an accident on the road: $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of Teraberanyans, a 34-year-old mechanic who died in his wife’s arms after a 1994 accident. Hydrologists hired by the family revealed that the curve’s drainage did not meet even its 1957 design standards. One of the spillways intended to drain water from the road was either buried long ago by mudslides or carelessly paved over. City engineers don’t know which.

In any case, Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents Sun Valley, demanded after Wednesday’s settlement that the city fix the road. A good start, but this burst of common sense is several years--and lives--too late. In 1981, the city settled another lawsuit involving an accident on the road after acknowledging that it “was aware of problems with the roadway as early as 1970.” At that time, some of the repairs were estimated at just $2,500.

Part of the problem is that no official mechanism exists to correct deficiencies discovered during litigation. After settling lawsuits, the city attorney’s office rarely follows up with the departments involved. So the check gets cut and nothing gets done.

But if City Council members want us to believe what they repeat like a mantra--that they, not the mayor or the various bureaucrats, run the city--then they need to accept a large share of the responsibility. They, after all, approved the settlements. They have the power to order immediate action. Someone should have done it after the first person died. Or the second. Or the third.