Court’s Repairs Called a Fire Hazard

Five-year-old temporary fixes for earthquake damage at the Van Nuys Superior Courthouse are more than just an annoyance, city officials said, they’re a fire hazard.

During a routine inspection, Los Angeles fire inspectors cited the building for four fire code violations on the seventh floor, the area most damaged in the 1994 Northridge quake.

Fire Chief Al Hernandez, who supervises the high-rise unit of the city’s Bureau of Fire Prevention, said missing ceiling tiles and the raw wood and plastic sheeting that for years have buttressed the marble tiles on the walls have been deemed unsafe. Any materials used in a high-rise building, even temporarily during construction or reconstruction, must be fire-retardant, Hernandez said.

Fire officials said the wood supports also make one public hallway too narrow for safe evacuation.

Hernandez said the inspector has issued the county a notice to correct the problems and has asked county officials for a timetable for repairs.

He said the problems were not grave enough to force the building’s evacuation. “It doesn’t sound like these are things that would require the seventh floor to be shut down,” Hernandez said.

“I was shocked to learn that it was a fire hazard, along with being an eyesore,” said Superior Court Judge Michael Farrell, who has made earthquake repairs a top issue since he took over as the supervising judge in Van Nuys this year.

Farrell said the violations cited encompass many of the areas jurists, lawyers and court staff members have been complaining about since the earthquake hit.

“We’ve been worried about the seventh floor for over five years,” Farrell said. “It’s a pain in the neck.”

It’s unclear why the county was not cited for those problems earlier.

Hernandez said there has been a change of courthouse inspectors. The previous inspector may have brought the issues to the county’s attention but agreed not to require immediate repairs, Hernandez said.

Annoyed that the building’s quake damage has seemingly been ignored for so long and frustrated over the dearth of information from county officials on repairs, Farrell called a news conference in February to denounce delays in the repairs.

County officials responded that because the building’s problems are mostly aesthetic, the Van Nuys courthouse has not been a top priority among the county’s dozens of quake-damaged buildings. Repairs to the 30-year-old building are slated to begin in 2001.