Fire Deaths Spotlight Perils of Security Bars

Firefighters’ efforts to rescue an elderly couple from a fatal South Los Angeles blaze Sunday night were hampered by the wrought-iron security bars that barricaded the windows and doors of the modest Spanish-style home on West 30th Avenue.

Andrew Gibson, a retired auto mechanic and church deacon, and his wife, Ethel, were trapped inside because the security bars on their bedroom windows did not have the emergency release latches required by state and local laws. Their deaths were the most recent examples of how frequently and tragically those laws are ignored, both by residents who worry more about burglars than fires and by authorities who say they don’t have the staffing for rigorous enforcement.

The problem is most prevalent in low-income neighborhoods, where homeowners and renters rely on the bars, rather than the more expensive alarm systems and private patrols found in wealthier communities, for crime protection.

A Los Angeles city Fire Department official estimated that nearly half of the homes in South-Central and East Los Angeles are potential deathtraps because they have bars that lack the release mechanism required by law.

That has not changed despite a number of tough new statewide regulations adopted in recent years--including new manufacturing standards for the releases adopted last month--to make fire deaths of trapped residents a thing of the past.

Local building inspectors and fire departments concede that the potential for more deaths is great but say they don’t have the funds to aggressively enforce the codes.

“It’s extremely labor intensive,” said Los Angeles city Fire Capt. Lou Gligorijevic, adding that the department staff is already stretched thin.

But critics--including some within the firefighting community--dismiss excuses, saying inspections to identify illegal security bars should be a priority.

The problem is compounded by a proliferation of unlicensed installers, themselves small businessmen trying to survive, who often fail to include the required release mechanisms. They cost about $60 each on new bars, $100 when retrofitting existing bars.

The release mechanism is usually a lever on the inside of the window that, when pulled, allows the bars to swing open. A foot pedal may also be used as a release mechanism that is easier for the elderly and children to operate.

Crime Rate Decrease

Though crime has dropped dramatically in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, security bars there remain an architectural staple, giving the forbidding feeling of a barricaded community.

“It’s a matter of economics for many people,” Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Steve Valenzuela said. “It’s what they can afford in terms of providing security for their homes.”

Kathy Phao’s father installed security bars on the family’s rented Pomona home a few years ago without including the required release mechanism.

Then in May, a candle ignited an early-morning house fire.

Phao and her husband, Phe Dith, helped free most of the family members from the inferno but Phao’s 3-year-old daughter, Richeanna, and the girl’s 52-year-old grandmother, Sin Chun, were trapped in a back bedroom with bolted bars on the windows.

The couple frantically pulled on the unyielding bars, which soon became scorching hot, burning their hands.

Richeanna called out “Daddy” twice before her cries faded into silence.

The toddler died that morning and her grandmother died a few days later. Six other family members were injured.

Since then, Phao, a refugee from war and poverty in Cambodia, has been warning everyone she knows about the danger of those bars.

“When I drive around and I see people with bars on their houses, I want to stop and tell them,” Phao said.

The Phao family is suing the bar manufacturers, accusing them of failing to include a warning label as required under a 1996 law. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in January, also accuses the landlord of failing to maintain a working smoke detector in the rented house.

The National Fire Protection Assn. says deaths related to security bars are on the rise nationwide, from about one a year in 1985 to about 30 a year today. But the association believes that many more deaths go unreported because some local agencies don’t track the presence of bars. That is true in California even though the state fire marshal requests such information.

Going against the trend, Orange County has seen a decline in such tragedies, though officials say they don’t know exactly why.

The last known Orange County fatalities for which security bars were partly blamed were in December 1991, when a Christmas tree ignited in a Santa Ana home. Two people were killed, two were injured, and scores were displaced when the blaze spread to other homes. Fire officials said bars installed on the windows blocked escape routes from the three-bedroom house.

In 1990, a Mexican immigrant doing repair work died when a fire broke out in the home where he was working. Smoke and flames blocked the front door, and a neighbor who tried to rescue him could not get past security bars that fire officials said had been installed on all the windows. An arson investigator concluded that the bars were all installed illegally, having no release mechanism.

In 1989, an 11-year-old girl burned to death in Stanton, trapped behind windows in which the landlord had installed metal bars.

Orange County Fire Capt. Paul Hunter said firefighters have the tools to get past security bars, but private citizens may be the first on the scene and are not likely to have any equipment.

Statewide, most of the reported victims are children and senior citizens living in poor neighborhoods.

“The same people who are at risk of crime are also at risk of fire death,” said Sharon Gamache, executive director of the National Fire Protection Assn., a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization.

Still, local firefighters and building inspectors say the new security bar laws--and most building codes--are enforced only on a complaint basis.

“We do the best with the very limited budget we have,” said David Keim, head of Los Angeles’ code enforcement bureau.

But some fire officials reject such excuses.

“That is not good enough,” said Vallejo Fire Chief Donald R. Parker, who was an Oakland fire captain in 1995 when five children died in an apartment fire, trapped behind security bars.

He said local firefighters and building inspectors are duty-bound to find the funding to enforce the security bar laws.

“You have to come to a building site, as I did early that morning in Oakland, and watch them pull out five dead children who burned because of these bars,” he said. “That is what you can’t afford.”

The city of Los Angeles conducted a citywide inspection in 1985 after a Fire Department study that said six people died in fires from 1980 to 1984 because of window bars that did not open.

The inspections found about 100,000 homes and apartments with security bars, half of which were installed without the release mechanism. But city officials say they have no records on the number of homeowners who were cited.

Since then no elected official has proposed funding for a new sweep.

One county inspection supervisor conceded that full-scale inspection programs are considered “occasionally, when there is a tragedy.”

Such a tragedy occurred Feb. 13, 1999, when fire engulfed the home of Irene Wiley, a 100-year-old woman living on West 85th Place in South-Central Los Angeles. It is a working-class neighborhood of older single-family homes, occupied mostly by Latino and African American families.

By the time firefighters cut the bars with electric saws--13 minutes after the fire was reported--Wiley was dead. Fire officials say it was unclear if the bars hampered her escape or if she died before she got to a window.

What is clear, firefighters say, is that the bars delayed a possible rescue.

“The sad part is that people put these bars on to keep the bad guys out but they also keep the good guys in,” said Los Angeles city Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis.

Installing Release Latch

On Wiley’s block, 23 of the 34 homes, or nearly 70%, have window bars.

Construction worker Aurelio Perez lives on that block, in a two-story house with black bars and grates on every window. But Perez said he can’t afford to install the release mechanisms on his windows.

“I’ve been thinking about putting them on,” he said with a shrug as he looked up at his bedroom windows from his gated front yard. “But I’m having some financial problems right now.”

On Sunday night, firefighters used electric saws to cut three of the window bars to enter the Gibson house, according to Collis.

In that Jefferson Park neighborhood, about a third of the homes have window bars and it is uncertain how many can be opened in a fire.

The bodies of the elderly couple were found in the home’s hallway. Collis said it is unclear whether the bars kept the couple from escaping or if they succumbed before reaching a window. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Gibson moved from Mississippi to Los Angeles in 1955 “to look for a better life,” his brother James said.

Andrew Gibson met and married Ethel, a Panama native and widow who was a neighbor of his sister. The couple had no children. Andrew moved into Ethel’s house 25 years ago when it already was fitted with bars on every window. James Gibson could not recall the couple ever discussing the dangers of the unopenable bars.

On Monday morning, he wiped away tears as a city sanitation worker dragged away his brother’s two dogs, which also perished in the blaze.

“He loved those dogs like they were his children,” James Gibson said.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of unlicensed security bar installers, according to representatives of the security bar industry.

Joe Campbell, who heads the Southern California chapter of the National Ornamental and Miscellaneous Metals Assn., said he suspects that many unlicensed installers try to save money by avoiding the required release latches.

A welder at a small ironworks shop on Florence Avenue in South Los Angeles said he knows that the release mechanisms are required on bedroom windows but confessed that he does not include the devices if the clients don’t want them.

“If clients want to trap themselves in their house, we will do it,” said the welder, who asked not to be identified.

The city and county of Los Angeles adopted laws in 1985 to outlaw all security bars on bedroom windows unless they include the release mechanism. The laws are retroactive.

State lawmakers were spurred into action by the 1995 Oakland tragedy.

In 1996, the Legislature adopted a bill by then-Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland) to allow cities and counties to set deadlines for homeowners to replace or remove illegal security bars.

The following year, Oakland adopted one of the nation’s most stringent window bar laws. The city required residents with window bars to install the release mechanisms or face heavy fines and criminal penalties. The inspections are still ongoing.

Further action was taken in response to a 1997 East Palo Alto fire that killed nine people, including five children, who were trapped in a house by security bars.

For example, the state Building Standards Commission just last month adopted standards for the release mechanisms to ensure that the bars open quickly during a fire--making California the first state in the nation to do so. The standards take effect in July.

A 1996 state law requires all security bars to be sold with a warning label, but an informal survey of a handful of hardware stores in Southeast Los Angeles County found several retail outlets selling bars without labels or with small, hard-to-find warnings at the bottom of the packaging.

A spokesman for the state fire marshal, which is responsible for enforcing the warning label law, conceded that enforcement is limited.

“It comes down to who is going to pay for it,” said John Guhl, the fire marshal’s regulations coordinator.