Targeted Steel Buildings Overdue for Inspection

The mandatory inspection of nearly 300 buildings in Los Angeles for steel-frame damage has slowed to a trickle, with more than 40% still not in compliance months after deadlines expired, city records show.

Damage ranging from minor cracks to potentially life-threatening failures affecting hundreds of joints has been found in nearly two-thirds of the buildings so far inspected.

And although deadlines for inspection began to lapse last October, the Building and Safety Department has yet to begin enforcement proceedings. Follow-up letters to delinquent owners have been drafted but will not be sent until late April.

The continued go-slow approach more than two years after the Northridge earthquake revealed the dramatic structural failures is based in part on findings that in almost all cases, the buildings could be repaired without evacuation of occupants.

The high cost of inspections and uncertainties over repair methods also have contributed to the city’s lenient posture, according to Richard Holguin, assistant chief of the building bureau.

Extensions of the six-month inspection period have been granted to about 30 building owners, and as many as 40 more extension requests are in the works, city officials said. After 123 reports poured in to the city at the end of 1995, the pace slowed considerably. Only 19 reports were filed in the first 2 1/2 months of 1996.

But, taking advantage of the grace period, somewhere between 70 and 100 building owners have simply ignored the orders, raising questions about the safety of occupants.

“There is potential danger,” said David L. Houghton, a senior principal of the Lawndale structural engineering firm of Myers, Nelson, Houghton Inc. “If they have buildings next to them that have had inspections and found damage, they could have a problem and not know about it.”

Inspection reports currently on file in City Hall--covering about half the buildings cited--show damage spread widely and unpredictably across the city.

One of the most heavily damaged areas was an eight-block stretch of Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles, where seven buildings required repairs to 20% or more of their joints and three had damage to more than 100 joints.

Nine buildings in the area have been found with 40% or more of their steel connections needing repairs.

The degree of hazard posed by these defects--cracks that sometimes penetrate clear through huge steel beams--remains a matter of speculation, but some structural engineers feel the problem may be less urgent.

“Most of the engineers who have been involved in building inspections have not found it necessary to vacate buildings as a result of the damage they have discovered,” said Ronald O. Hamburger, a structural engineer on a joint state-private panel examining the steel-frame problem.

“That does not mean the damage should not be repaired, but in the judgment of the engineer making the inspection, there are not imminent life safety issues in those buildings.”

Though encouraged by those findings, Hamburger said he is concerned that some steel-frame damage will go undetected because it is outside the area affected by the ordinance, most of the Valley and parts of the Westside.

“The mandatory inspections are in geographic regions where we knew that a significant percentage of the buildings that had been suspected had sustained damage,” Hamburger said.

“What is of more interest but probably will not get answered is how many damaged buildings there may be in areas outside the region affected by the ordinance.”

There is reason to believe, he said, that some damage existed before the Northridge earthquake, the result of construction defects or other earthquakes such as Whittier Narrows.

The inspection ordinance was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council in February 1995 in reaction to the discovery after the Northridge earthquake that dozens of buildings were bent out of shape or had severe structural cracks.

About 350 notices were issued to building owners to hire engineers to inspect their buildings, mostly from April through June last year. Since then, the list has been winnowed to 280 after some of the buildings were found not to be of steel construction.

Owners who find damage are allowed 90 days to take out repair permits and two years to make repairs.

Residential buildings were excluded from the ordinance out of concern that costs would be passed on to tenants who could not afford them.

But Holguin said his department has asked Hal Bernson, the councilman who sponsored the ordinance, to schedule hearings on an amendment that would require the inspection of 35 high-rise apartment houses, mainly located in the Wilshire corridor.

Reasons for the low compliance rate are many, including a few bureaucratic mix-ups.

Several of the delinquent owners contacted by The Times either declined to talk or said they had not received an inspection order.

“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” said Jack Bernstein, executive director of Cri-Help Inc., a North Hollywood residential care facility. “I wasn’t notified.”

Others said they have completed the inspections and don’t know why the city has no record of it.

“Somehow, some way, it fell through the cracks,” said Richard Lewis, vice president for public relations for Hanna-Barbera, one of the building owners listed as delinquent. “We are in the works now to make sure the city knows we have been inspected and that anything that needs to be done will be done.”

Sunkist Growers repaired damage to its Sherman Oaks headquarters building before the ordinance was adopted only to find that the city wanted more inspections than its engineer carried out, spokeswoman Claire Peters said. An extension was obtained and the report will be filed in time in June, she said.

Once damage is found, owners face daunting obstacles--both financial and technical--in planning the repairs.

Insurance companies are generally taking a hard line, limiting their coverage to the cost of repairs, so that owners who want to make their buildings stronger must pay out of their own pockets.

Meanwhile, engineers studying the steel beam failures remain perplexed by the poor performance of a construction method once presumed practically immune to earthquake damage. They say they are still three years away from a solution.

Most of those making repairs in the meantime usually merely restore the buildings to original condition, generally by rewelding joints that have cracked and, in extreme cases, cutting out sections of steel and welding new metal in its place.

“We are uncertain and frustrated by these developments,” said Houghton. “Insurance does not cover the cost of rehabilitation, and we wonder sometimes, why only repair these frames so that it can only happen again?”

Staff Writer Kenneth Reich contributed to this story.

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Steel Frame Inspection

Following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the Los Angeles City Council last year adopted an ordinance requiring inspections for steel frame damage in hundreds of buildings in the Valley and parts of the Westside. Damage has been found in a high percentage of the buildings so far inspected, but more than 40% of the owners who received orders have still not complied, according to city records.

* Orders issued: 351

* Exempted (not steel): 71

* Reports filed: 142

* Buildings damaged: 100

* Delinquent: 116

* Still within deadline or otherwise complied: 22

* Total joints inspected: 12,082

* Joints damaged: 2,256

* Average cost of repairs per joint: $12,400