Quake Hazard Found at Seismic Office

The 89-year-old Washington building in downtown Los Angeles, leased by the state to house hundreds of workers, including 30 seismic safety engineers, does not meet building codes and would suffer “potential severe damage” in a nearby moderate earthquake, an engineer’s report said Friday.

The report by Brandow and Johnston Associates, a structural engineering firm, is part of a study required under the settlement of a lawsuit by the seismic safety engineers against the state.

The February settlement also required that, if such a finding were made, the state must repair the building to bring it into compliance with building codes or move the engineers elsewhere.

A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which prepared the settlement, said that after the report is reviewed, “a determination will have to be made on whether to fix the problem or move to a different building.”

The two seismic safety engineers who led the fight against moving into the 13-story building at 311 S. Spring St., Bing-Nan Feng and Schani Abeyesundere, now work in it, pursuant to the settlement. Their unit occupies the 10th and 11th floors.

“We feel we have been vindicated by the engineer’s report,” Feng said. “The report agrees with everything we have been saying. Now the state should repair the building.”

The state pays more than $2 million a year to lease the Washington building.

Most of the approximately 300 state workers who occupy it were moved from the Junipero Serra State Office Building at 1st Street and Broadway years after it was declared seismically deficient following the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

That building is empty and awaiting demolition.

The seismic safety engineers, who are charged with ensuring the earthquake safety of hospitals, resisted joining the move for months because they insisted that, despite a $4.7-million seismic retrofitting of the Washington building, it remained out of compliance with the pertinent earthquake codes.

The Brandow and Johnston report found that the building does not meet the standards of the Uniform Building Code, or the standards set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Applied Technology Council.

At the time of the engineers’ lawsuit, Mike Courtney, the deputy director of the General Services Department, said: “We believe strongly that we are moving these people to a much safer building” than the Junipero Serra.

Courtney has left the department, and spokesman Rob Deignan said Friday that he could not be reached for comment.

The area of downtown Los Angeles in which the Junipero Serra and Washington building are located is in a zone of apparent seismic weakness.

After the Northridge quake, one parking structure had to be demolished and a $300-million retrofitting was undertaken nearby at City Hall.

The Caltrans regional headquarters is being replaced by a new, stronger building.