Welding Problems Arise at Hospital Site

If ever there was a location demanding state-of-the-art earthquake design, this is it.

They are building a new public hospital here--within just a few miles of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults. The rupture of either, seismologists warn, could dwarf the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Construction of the $640-million San Bernardino Medical Center began a year ago with the highest of seismic design expectations.

The five-building complex, which will be paid for by local, state and federal tax dollars, is supposed to remain completely functional--even if a magnitude 8.3 quake strikes the San Andreas. The buildings are made of steel and sit atop shock-absorbing rubber pads.

When it opens in 1998, the medical center will have more than 340 beds and a trauma unit that is expected to be among the busiest in the West.

But the best of intentions are only as good as their execution in the real world of construction. The hospital project has been shaken by controversy over whether it can stand up to the seismic challenge.

Interviews and inspection documents show that problems with weld cracking emerged soon after construction began in spring 1995. Project engineers, meanwhile, decided to exempt thousands of other connections from testing aimed at detecting flaws, on the basis that they were not of great enough structural significance.

Blame for some of the problems has been placed on the use of a welding material that experts say is susceptible to fracturing. A project engineer concluded in a memo that the material apparently was the source of “numerous cracks.”

Last year, hundreds of connections had to be re-welded either at the hospital or at a nearby steel shop where cracks also surfaced during work on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum press box.

A status report filed in July 1995 by the hospital project’s lead inspector said that testing of a particular sample from the shop of San Bernardino Steel “is indicating cracks in approximately 70% of the welds.” Testing of a similar lot of welds supplied by the project’s other steel supplier, the report said, found “1 crack out of 450.” The second supplier has not used the disputed welding material.

Engineers and county officials responsible for the hospital’s construction said that cracks will continue to be repaired. They have required use of a different welding material since late October. Moreover, many welds originally exempted from testing have been examined and will be monitored, officials said.

“We’re comfortable and have a high level of confidence,” said the project’s structural engineer, Jefferson W. Asher.

“A building is not a Swiss watch,” he said. “A building is a building. There are cracks in concrete buildings. There are cracks in steel buildings. Things are not perfect. We anticipate that from a design perspective.”

The principal architect, Michael Bobrow, said that when the project is complete it “will be the world’s most earthquake-safe hospital.”

San Bernardino Steel representative Roger E. Ferch said his company has a tradition of quality work. He said the welding materials initially used on the job were adequate and approved by the engineer. Ferch suggested that the volume of identified defects was inflated because inspectors erred in determining what constituted cracks. Many of the cracks, he said, were shallow in depth.

“Majority of them, you just touch them with a grinder and they go away,” he said.

“For the amount of tons of steel, for the amount of tons of weld metal that is in this hospital project, there is not an abnormal amount of true cracking,” said Ferch, vice president of Herrick Corp., the parent of San Bernardino Steel. “. . . We don’t really feel that there was a problem.”

Ferch blamed some of the cracking on what he called possible shortcomings in the engineer’s design. Asher, the engineer, said the problems were not of his doing but a result of inadequate performance by San Bernardino Steel.

Since 1971, when three people were killed in the collapse of Los Angeles County’s Olive View Hospital during the Sylmar earthquake, state law has mandated strict construction standards for hospitals.

Although no hospitals collapsed during the Northridge quake, vital services were crippled in medical complexes from Santa Monica to the San Fernando Valley. Doctors and nurses were forced to treat patients in parking lots, while infants and disabled veterans had to be transported to other areas for treatment.

Still, the Colton project’s engineer authorized the use of a welding material widely considered too brittle for heavy-duty connections.

Some structural steel suppliers have used the material because it is more conducive to fast, high-volume production than other welding materials. This has enabled contractors to keep costs lower.

Studies conducted after the Northridge quake concluded that the material, called “120” welding wire, has only 25% the resistance to fracturing compared to other available weld materials.

Asher, the lead engineer, said that in retrospect he would not again approve use of the material because he believes it contributed to some of the welding problems.

“As of today, I feel pretty strongly that it’s something probably from a quality assurance perspective you wouldn’t want to use.”

The frequency of cracking on the hospital construction should have prompted officials to call for better materials and more testing, according to Steven J. Jorgenson, chief welding engineer for the Pasadena-based Parsons Corp.

“You’d think they’d learn from the Northridge earthquake and bear down a lot harder--especially in view of using an electrode [the welding material] that’s highly suspect,” Jorgenson said. “I think if they were going to use that electrode, they should test every connection they make out there.”

Said John F. Hall, a Caltech engineer who headed an independent examination of structures damaged by the Northridge quake: “If you’ve gone to considerable expense to achieve a fully operational [medical] capability after the big earthquake, it doesn’t make any sense to use that welding material.”

Inspection records show that difficulties with cracking were experienced for months last year.

Paul Coleman, an architect for the Sacramento-based Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, repeatedly noted in agency reports that “numerous cracks” had developed. Some of the cracks he cited were in the complex’s six-story Nursing Tower.

Hospital welding inspectors began videotaping operations at San Bernardino Steel last fall.

Inspectors and a shop welder were recorded saying that they suspected or knew weld defects were being covered up.

One inspector, Steven Knapp, pointed out cracks or other defects that he alleged had been “essentially buttered over” with a new layer of welding material.

County officials showed the video twice in early December to executives of Herrick Corp., The Times has learned. Then the officials gave it to the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office.

On Dec. 23, the district attorney’s office served a search warrant and seized files from San Bernardino Steel. The investigation remains open, according to prosecutor Glenn Yabuno.

The vice president of Herrick said the company has found nothing to substantiate allegations that flawed welds were covered up or that supervisors authorized anyone to do so. “We consider ourselves a responsible company,” Ferch said.

Concerns about the project’s welds also were raised by the principal inspection firm on the job, Gunter Enterprises Inc., which was documenting repeated instances of cracking and noting that testing was not being done on certain connections.

Faced with the videotaped allegations and the inspection reports, hospital project officials ordered that a test be performed on the base of a steel column that had undergone numerous repairs for cracks.

The test itself proved controversial.

In Sacramento, the senior structural engineer of the Office of Statewide Health Planning, William Staehlin, wrote a memo six days before the test questioning its validity. He said the test would not impose the type of dynamic force expected from an earthquake. Staehlin was instructed not to intervene further.

His boss, Walter C. Stahl, told The Times that Staehlin’s concerns were “really his personal opinion, [not] the position of the office.” Stahl, who is not an engineer, said he told his subordinate “to back off.”

The test, conducted Jan. 17, involved removing the steel column and placing it under thousands of pounds of force. After the column passed the test without fracturing, it was reinstalled.

Soon after, county officials fired the Gunter inspection firm without stating a reason, according to the company’s president, Glenn J. Gunter.

“The county shot the messenger,” Gunter said. He said his inspectors performed “with diligence and candor.”

When questioned by The Times, San Bernardino County officials declined to say why Gunter was terminated.

Although the welds of that single column survived the stress test, there are dozens of other similarly situated connections that were exempted by the project engineer from ultrasound testing and now are covered with thick steel plates.

Staehlin, the state engineer, told The Times: “There is some concern” that cracks may exist underneath.

John A. Martin Jr., whose engineering firm was hired by the state to review the project before construction began, said cracked welds in these locations could undermine the seismic design. The welds stand between the steel structure above and the rubber shock absorbers, known as “base isolators,” at the foundation.

The project engineer, Asher, said he has no second thoughts about exempting the welds from testing. “The testing requirement [was] waived because we didn’t feel that it was necessary given the load demand” on the welds in question, Asher said.

Despite the difficulties that have surrounded the project, Asher said he believes the hospital will live up to the highest expectations.

“All the data that we have seen indicates that it is going to perform very, very well,” Asher said. “And I think we’ve taken the extra steps that are required to deal with these controversies . . . to give ourselves that level of confidence.”