Bank Discounts Theory on Arson as U.S. Joins Probe

Federal investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms today joined the investigation of the $450-million fire that killed a man, injured 40 others and incinerated four stories of Los Angeles’ tallest skyscraper.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for First Interstate Bancorp, owner of the 62-story tower, discounted arson speculation prompted by news that 100 workers on the floor where the fire broke out might lose their jobs because their division was sold.

The cause, and even the exact spot the fire started late Wednesday, remained under investigation, fire officials said.

Late Wednesday, negotiations were completed on the $40-million sale of First Interstate’s capital markets division to Printon, Kane & Co. of Short Hills, N.J., bank spokesman Bob Campbell said today. Word of the sale was “closely held,” and wasn’t officially announced until Thursday morning, he said.

“A lot of people are reading into it, but it just doesn’t ring true in terms of my understanding of the sequence of facts,” Campbell said.

A decision on what would become of the 100 employees in the division, which buys and sells government bonds in the bank’s portfolio, is up to the buyer, he said.

Employees of the division have known it was up for sale since Oct. 21, when First Interstate announced it would sell $6 billion in assets and eliminate 1,000 jobs in a corporate restructuring.

The division was on the 12th floor, where the fire first was seen shooting from shattered windows as a ring of flames licked upward, eventually gutting the 12th through 15th floors and badly damaging the 16th.

The badly burned body of janitor Alexander John Handy, 24, of Palmdale was found in an elevator stuck on the 12th floor.