Fire Death in Elevator Laid to Human Error

Human error--not elevator malfunction--caused one death and several close calls for maintenance workers trapped in the First Interstate Bank fire, the city’s chief elevator inspector said Monday.

“They (the elevators) all did what they’re supposed to do,” said Harvey Ledesma after a full day of inspecting the skyscraper’s 33 elevators.

“There was a lack of knowing the danger of going to a fire floor” on the part of several maintenance employees during last Wednesday night’s blaze, he said.

Meanwhile, Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said the cause of the fire in the 62-story building remains undetermined and that the investigation will continue.

Arson Question

However, First Interstate officials said they have been told that arson is being ruled out and that the exact cause may never be determined.

The 2,000-degree temperatures reached by the fire likely destroyed any clues that may have helped investigators determine exactly how and when it started, said Bob Campbell, a bank spokesman.

“They pretty much ruled out arson,” Campbell said, referring to city and federal investigators. “It might be impossible to find a cause.”

Campbell said some electrical work had been done about three weeks ago on the 12th floor, which housed an elaborate computer and communications center. The fire is believed to have started in the southeast corner of that floor.

Ledesma, the city’s chief safety engineer for elevators, said elevators serving the fire floors were activated by heat sensors, dropping to the main floor where their doors remained open. But, he said, the victim and some other maintenance workers in Los Angeles’ tallest building bypassed this safety system, allowing the elevators to open on or near floors engulfed in flames.

The victim, Alexander John Handy, 24, of Palmdale, a maintenance engineer in the building, boarded elevator No. 33 and, using a special fire key, activated a switch inside his elevator, traveling to the 12th floor, where he died almost immediately in the intense heat.

Ledesma said Handy, after reaching the 12th floor, had to push an “open” button that allowed the door to remain open until a “close” button is pushed.

Ledesma said he inspected the elevator in which Handy died and found that the fire’s intense heat had partially melted its door. “The (fire) key was melted into the ‘on’ position,” he said.

In his report to the city’s Department of Building and Safety, Ledesma said he will consider recommending that use of elevator fire keys be restricted to firefighters and other officials called to the scene of an emergency.

Building maintenance workers using elevators in attempts to escape the flames must have activated “independent service” switches inside locked panels that overrode fire safety systems and allowed the workers to travel to floors 12 through 16, where the fire was raging, Ledesma said.

He said he found elevators five, six, and eight on the 11th and 13th floors with the “independent service” switch in the “on” position.

The building’s elevators were built by the Otis Elevator Co. The company’s director of Southern California operations, Doug Gibbs, said that just a few weeks before the fire “the entire elevator life safety system was tested and it functioned perfectly.”

One worker, Radmila Radich, gave a different version, however, indicating that elevator safety systems were not working properly.

Radich, 40, said that after the fire started she called for an elevator while working on the 19th floor simply by pressing a button, and that the elevator promptly arrived.

“We pushed the button and the elevator came,” she said in a telephone interview on Monday.

Then, along with another maintenance worker, Jose Garcia, Radich said the two pushed the 13th-floor button, where they exited into choking smoke. They were able to crawl to safety in a stairwell.

In related developments, officials of the Air Quality Management District said that speculation that the fire had released dangerous asbestos fibers into the atmosphere was unfounded.

An AQMD spokesman said an inspector was dispatched to the building Friday evening and found no evidence of asbestos material in the structure.

Building tenants, in groups of 15, were allowed into the building on Monday to gather necessary documents. Wearing hard hats, representatives of each bank department and scores of workers from independent companies were escorted by security personnel carrying two-way radios.

Alan Babcock, vice president of the Los Angeles office of Union Bank of Bavaria, took three assistants with backpacks, boxes and a luggage carrier with him to his offices on the 32nd floor.

“There was a black film on everything, he said, “but the documents are in good shape. I thought it was going to be a lot worse. We only had 10 minutes, so it was like one of those contests where you win two minutes at a toy store.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden said he will seek to expand a motion he made last week to require automatic sprinkler system retrofitting at all municipal facilities, including City Hall.

Holden had proposed the sprinkler system retrofitting of all pre-1974 high-rise buildings of at least 75 feet in height. State and city laws require the sprinkler systems in buildings constructed after July, 1974.

Holden’s high-rise retrofitting proposal is scheduled for City Council consideration today.

Times Staff Writers Frederick M. Muir, Ted Vollmer and Boris Yaro contributed to this story.