Palisades High Closed; Asbestos Danger Cited

Los Angeles school officials have ordered Palisades High School closed today after discovering that cancer-causing asbestos was being mishandled by construction workers on the Westside campus.

The discovery may represent only “the tip of the iceberg,” district sources said. Safety inspectors at five other schools recently found possible exposure of workers, students and school staff to asbestos. Officials are concerned that an unknown number of students may have been exposed as a result of the hundreds of construction jobs now underway throughout the district.

The rare school closure is expected to last until Monday, district officials said.

Inspectors are now fanning out to all older schools where work is going on, district officials said. William Panos, director of the district’s environmental health and safety branch, said inspectors have been checking the highest-priority schools for the past 48 hours.

“Our staff is out and has been out last night, all day today, tonight, tomorrow to look at every project we can,” Panos said.

Overall, 500 projects have been identified where construction may have disturbed asbestos, Panos said.

Contractors at each of the six schools identified were working in areas known to contain asbestos but not following protocols prescribed by law for the handling of the hazardous fibers that can lodge in the lungs when airborne, increasing the likelihood of lung cancer, district officials said. At all the schools except Palisades, the problem was restricted to a few rooms, and was abated without a complete shutdown, officials said.

Officials are considering today whether to suspend the contractors, a source said.

The problems at the six schools resulted from a “complete breakdown in communication and protective measures to make sure when you are working in an asbestos area, there is protection,” said Angelo Bellomo, a member of the district’s environmental safety team that pushed for the inspections.

His team will brief the Board of Education today on additional “strong measures” they will recommend. He wouldn’t elaborate.

The district’s latest environmental crisis surfaced during inspections conducted after the Oct. 17 Hector Mine earthquake in the Mojave Desert. While looking for possible damage, inspectors at Woodlawn Elementary School in Bell found that construction workers had cut into an asbestos-lined air conditioning duct, and were being exposed to the carcinogen without taking required precautions.

The breakdown in safety procedures at Woodlawn led the district’s environmental safety team to demand the new round of inspections, which turned up the problem at five other schools. Besides Palisades and Woodlawn, the schools are Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park, Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles, Hamilton High School in the Pico-Robertson area and Century Park School in Inglewood.

District officials do not know whether any students have been exposed to asbestos. Panos said his staff will conduct tests to determine the amount of asbestos, the type of activity and the proximity of students to analyze the likelihood of exposure.

On Thursday, the discovery at Palisades delayed the start of school for an hour, students said.

When gates to the campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean finally opened, two buildings remained closed as inspectors sought to determine the extent of the problem.

About 800 students were unable to attend classes, district officials said.

At the end of the school day, school officials announced that classes would resume normally today. But about 6 p.m. Thursday Panos overruled that decision.

In a report delivered Thursday night to the board as it deliberated in closed session on the appointment of a new acting superintendent, Panos said asbestos abatement personnel would work today and through the weekend.

“At this time, we are relatively sure the school will be able to reopen Monday, Nov. 8,” Panos said.

Palisades staff notified parents through an automated telephone message system not to send their children.

In a statement released Thursday night, district officials announced that an SAT college entrance exam scheduled Saturday at Palisades will be moved to nearby Revere Middle School.

About a dozen students remaining at the school Thursday night reacted calmly to the news.

“They told us there was asbestos in two buildings,” said senior Ansley Weller. “They said they had to do tests. They weren’t certain there was a problem.”

Board member David Tokofsky said the incident provided another example of battles going on between units within the district that leave children at risk.

“Asbestos is all over the place,” Tokofsky said. “At the same time, there’s an ongoing battle between environmental safety and maintenance and operations. The maintenance guys are like cowboys. If there’s a building burning down, maintenance and operations comes running screaming, ‘Out of our way. We’ll fix it.’ Then environmental safety shows up and says, ‘Don’t you dare go in there and disturb the fibers.’ ”

Times education writers Martha Groves and Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.