Crews Enter Collapsed Apartments

In what they described as the biggest retrieval of personal property in a collapsed building since the Northridge quake, 40 firefighters Sunday entered a ruined Echo Park apartment house and started to remove furniture, clothes and small belongings.

Tenants of the 24-unit building, which fell Friday morning, causing one death and 36 injuries, were brought from their shelter a short distance away and asked to give an inventory and the precise location of their valuables, before the firefighters went in.

Then, under the close supervision of ranking personnel, the firefighters started on the topmost second story, loading everything for each unit through windows onto a bulldozer outside, which took it to specially numbered storage compartments down the street.

“This is everything many of these people owned, and we are determined to do as careful a job of saving it for them as possible,” said Capt. Steve Ruda, a department spokesman.

As they listed their contents, the tenants were asked by a battery of police officers and city building and safety officials what warning signs they had noted before the collapse and what they thought caused it.

The investigators said it would probably take two weeks or more to determine clearly the cause of the building failure.

But some tenants said there had been odd noises in the building, spreading cracks, doors that would not close and plumbing leaks for weeks beforehand.

Two tenants spoke Sunday of seeing Barry David Wallman, the Ventura County man they believed owned the building, coming to the site a few days before the collapse and overseeing some repairs.

Resident Anna Oliva said that before Wallman and his brother, Daniel, took control of the apartments, the property was in the hands of the city.

“When the city owned it, it was better taken care of,” she said. “There were more inspections. After the Wallmans took over we saw fewer inspectors. Although the Wallmans tried to be nice to us, things were always happening. I had a roof fall in my bathroom.”

Oliva said she and her family escaped through a window after the collapse.

Janie Ramirez, another tenant, said she had noticed gradually spreading cracks in the building, warped windows and doors that didn’t fit from the day she and her daughter, Janice, 10, moved in on March 8, 1999.

“The last few weeks, we were hearing strange clicks when we turned on the water,” she said.

Two males, probably the Wallmans, came to the building and oversaw the installation of plastic pipes, but the clicks continued, she said.

“Some tenants were kicking the walls to get even with them,” said Ramirez. “And next month, we were going to get a $30 rent increase.”

The Wallmans have not been available for comment. The building was cited two years ago for a damaged foundation, but it is not known if the foundation contributed to the collapse.

As the firefighters removed the belongings, Ruda and police Sgt. Paul Torrence, assistant watch commander in the Rampart Division, allowed a few reporters and photographers into the building on a brief tour.

Everywhere, the floors were covered with debris, some places slanted, floorboards extruded and stairs leaning. The tour stopped short of the most seriously compromised south end of the apartment house.

Ruda said that by best estimates, the building had “dropped 5 feet and moved 3 or 4 feet to the west” during the collapse.

Meanwhile, Officer Dan Logan, who was at the site Sunday, said he and his partner, Steve Hernandez, entered the units minutes after the collapse.

Logan said they noticed a strong odor of gas, and saw the body of the only victim to die in the collapse, Juan Francisco Pineda, 31, before managing to pull two males, semiconscious and in shock, to safety moments later.

Ruda and Battalion Chief Christopher Kawai, who was commanding the retrieval operation Sunday, stressed that the building was not safe enough to allow tenants in to take their own belongings.

But, Ruda said, the Fire and Police departments were doing everything they could to ensure that nothing would be lost. The city was picking up the bill for retrieving and storing the tenants’ belongings.

“We are handling everything as delicately as possible,” he said.

“It’s Christmas,” Torrence said. “Our goal is to see that the victims of this tragedy get all their property back.”