Seismic Engineers Deem Their New Building Unsafe

They are state engineers who inspect hospitals for seismic safety. So they have expertise to back up their pleas that the renovated 88-year-old downtown office building they are to be moved into does not meet seismic safety requirements.

Despite one retrofitting that cost $3.5 million, paid for by the building’s owners, and the promise of a second state-funded $1.2-million retrofitting, the engineers are still balking at moving into what they consider an unsafe structure.

“No, it’s not yet acceptable,” said Bing-Nan Feng, one of two engineers leading at least 30 colleagues in a mini-protest movement. “A lot of questions we’ve asked have not yet been answered.”

State officials say they have done almost everything possible to accommodate the engineers’ concerns about the so-called Washington building at 311 S. Spring St., including their pledge of a second retrofitting and an assurance that the engineers will not have to move until the project is completed this summer.

In addition, officials note, the building the engineers occupy now--the 43-year-old Junipero Serra State Office Building at 107 S. Broadway--has been deemed seismically deficient itself, ever since the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

“We believe strongly that we are moving these people to a much safer building,” said Mike Courtney, deputy director of the state Department of General Services. “I wouldn’t be pushing this, if I didn’t believe this was the case.”

The battle over the 13-story Washington building, leased by the state for 20 years at a starting price of more than $2 million a year, reflects a wider dispute over just how earthquake-safe the buildings occupied by state workers have to be.

The engineers in question have been quartered for many years in the Serra building, which Allan E. Porush, a state-hired Los Angeles structural engineer, found in a 1995 report did not “have adequate strength . . . to withstand the severe ground-shaking intensities, such as those that might, on average, occur once in 475 years.”

Given the long odds, however, Porush felt it was not necessary to move right away.

Six years later, all but a few of the 1,750 employees who were occupying the Serra building have been moved, many to a renovated building down the street at 4th Street and Broadway, and a few hundred others to the bottom eight stories of the Washington building.

When the Serra building is vacated, state officials say, it will probably be demolished.

Still, Feng, co-protest leader Schani Abeyesundere and the other engineers remain in the old building, determined not to budge until they are sure their new quarters are safe.

They say they understand the potential for danger; they inspect buildings for a living.

They complain, for instance, that General Services has refused to roll back the carpets for an inspection of the Washington building’s floors, which the engineers say are weak and discontinuous, without adequate lateral reinforcement.

Last year, they won the support of the head of their agency, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, known by the acronym OSHPD.

Director David M. Carlisle, in a Sept. 21 letter to General Services head Barry Keene, declared: “Based on the information I have been presented, I feel there are still too many seismic safety uncertainties to conclude that the new building meets the terms of the lease. It is in OSHPD’s best interest that [you] find an alternate location.”

But a spokeswoman for Carlisle said the Health Planning agency’s director changed his mind after meeting with Keene Jan. 4 and agreed to accept a second retrofitting.

Porush, who did the 1994 report on the Serra building, has done a new report saying that, with the second retrofitting, the Washington building will be acceptable.

“I believe it will provide a level of protection for life safety that will be adequate for an office building,” Porush said in an interview. “I would not be averse to having my own office in that building.

“I did not say it would be the perfect building. . . . But I think the engineers will be significantly safer in this building.”

Even the Washington owner, Gilbert Dreyfuss, was not enthusiastic about Porush’s conclusions, which he called faint praise.

Dreyfuss maintains that, with the retrofittings, his building will be safe, period.

But Feng and Abeyesundere say they fear that, under state-recommended criteria, it will be no safer than the Serra.

They say they believe the Washington building, like their present headquarters, now rates a 5 on the state’s seismic risk scale, meaning it poses a substantial risk to life in the event of a severe earthquake.

They contend that the state should accept only buildings with a risk level of 3, where the threat to life from a severe quake is “minor.”

Porush, however, said that the Washington building will be as safe, after the second retrofitting, as older hospital buildings that are approved by the engineers.

In a May 1 letter, Courtney, the deputy director of the General Services Department, seemed to side with Feng and Abeyesundere, by remarking, “The requirement for the Washington Building is to retrofit the building to a seismic risk level of 3.”

A spokesman for General Services said this was a mistake that Courtney later corrected in a second letter. But he said the second letter could not be released, because it could not be found.