Retrofit Urged for County Headquarters

Earthquake experts have declared that the County Hall of Administration needs a seismic retrofit likely to cost $160 million to $170 million, providing another financial shock at a time when county government is apparently unable to pay for vital programs or avoid massive layoffs of civil servants.

With federal disaster funds for such major projects diminishing, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently approving only small amounts for other county buildings damaged in the Northridge earthquake, and with available insurance seemingly inadequate, the repair work would be more expensive than the massive retrofit under way at Los Angeles City Hall.

The city has a bond issue to finance the $153-million project at City Hall, but it is unclear where the money to do the county job would come from. One supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky, believes it may be more desirable to construct a new building on the same site rather than trying to fix it.

“City Hall is one thing, a historic building,” Yaroslavsky said Friday. “The Hall of Administration [opened in 1960] is anything but historic. . . . One of the options that ought to be reviewed is tearing it down and building something new. It does not make sense to sink the kind of money into this that is being sunk into City Hall.”

He suggested that a bond issue to finance the project be put before voters.

However, Sandra Davis, chief deputy to County Administrative Officer Sally Reed, said that in the current political climate, a bond issue--which she said would require a two-thirds majority--would be difficult to pass.

“We will make an effort with FEMA to get federal reimbursement, as soon as we have all the material required to submit a proper claim,” Davis said.

“Even though there have been [smaller] federal grants than we requested on some other buildings lately, we will pursue on a legal basis as full a reimbursement as possible for all county facilities, whether hospitals, administrative buildings or courthouses.”

The report was commissioned by county officials soon after the 1994 earthquake, at the same time that temporary repairs in the eight-story building were begun. It was completed in March but was not publicly disclosed.

After receiving the damage report from the engineering-construction firm of Black & Veatch, Davis said the county asked another firm, Kajima Associates, to prepare by November a precise repair plan with the help of Black & Veatch.

The Hall of Administration, like many other county buildings, is mortgaged, and county officials note that they have very little equity in the building.

Chief FEMA spokesman Morrie Goodman said his agency “is in no way, shape or form making any eligibility determinations based on the amount of money in the federal recovery coffers. Every case is judged strictly on the merits of eligibility under the Robert T. Stafford Act [on disaster relief] and the federal code of regulations. If any damaged building is eligible for federal funds, that building will be funded in accordance with the rules and regulations.”

He said a more detailed statement would have to await further information.

Ralph T. Eberts, the structural engineer who supervised preparation of the Black & Veatch report, warned this week that a large earthquake would probably cause “severe structural damage” in the weakened Hall of Administration, “and you could have life-threatening situations” for some of the 2,750 workday occupants.

Eberts, senior project manager for the engineering construction firm, was asked for comment in light of ambiguous language in the report, prepared at a cost to the county of about $250,000.

“The damage observed does not constitute an ‘unsafe’ condition,” Black & Veatch stated in its written conclusion. “This means that the tenant can continue to occupy the building without restrictions. However, the analysis of the lateral load-resisting system of the building indicates that it is significantly below today’s minimum life safety standards.”

The report was filled with photos of extensive cracks through much of the structure. The report found no damage in columns or slabs supporting shear walls, but it said there were cracks in both the shear walls and wall piers. “Major portions of the existing structure have just 25% to 50% of the strength needed to meet the current minimum life safety standards,” the report stated.

Explaining further this week, Eberts said the Hall of Administration has a “real deficiency. It might be a poor performer in a major quake, but it wouldn’t collapse, to our best knowledge. . . . It does not have up-to-date shear capacity or ductility,” the ability to bend without breaking.

Also present at the interview was Thomas V. Schriber, deputy director of the county’s Internal Services Department, who said that in a major seismic event, “I don’t think there’d be a collapse, but you’d never be able to use the building again.”

Asked if it would be dangerous not to repair it, Eberts responded: “I don’t know that I’d put it that severely. But this building has serious problems.”

Schriber said county officials have ruled out a proposal that they use a “sliding-friction” seismic base isolation system, which might be far cheaper to install, as the major element in a retrofit, because “we’re not going to try an untested system on a major building.”

Instead, he said, a choice will be made between a rubber-spring seismic base isolation, such as is being installed at City Hall, and more traditional reinforcing.

The county official said the Uniform Building Code mandates that all repairs be done according to today’s code, while FEMA often wants only to pay for bringing a building back up to its condition before the earthquake.

Since the Hall of Administration was built under a 1950s code, this would be far less expensive, but illegal, he said.

The official who disclosed that the work would cost between $160 million and $170 million was R.E. (Jim) Abbott, the senior deputy director of the Internal Services Department. The estimate was later confirmed by Schriber and Davis.

Carol Kindler, an assistant division chief in the county’s chief administrative office who is the liaison with FEMA and the state Office of Emergency Services, said she is pessimistic about FEMA’s attitude on the funding of such a big project because “we’ve turned in a couple of large projects and they’ve been approved for patch and paint, when they should have been millions of dollars.”

She said the county had asked FEMA to grant $64.2 million for full replacement of the psychiatric hospital at County-USC Medical Center “and they approved $1.1 million.”

“On that one, we’ve gone into appeal,” she said.

“At the pediatric hospital at County-USC, we asked $71.9 million for full replacement and they have approved $14.3 million,” she said.

The issue of reimbursement for the two hospitals has still not been resolved after nine months, Kindler said.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, by contrast, has received $80.5 million so far from FEMA toward a projected $99.5-million in earthquake repairs. But in that case, Coliseum commissioners got their requests in soon after the Northridge earthquake, and benefited from direct support from the White House.

Although a FEMA grant is the major option now open to the county for securing funding for the Hall of Administration repair or possible replacement, she said, the county does have $240 million in insurance on a large number of county buildings. It includes a $40-million deductible and was purchased from a consortium of about 30 companies.

“It depends on which buildings get in the queue first as to how much insurance could be used on each building,” Kindler said. “If the final report on the Hall of Administration does not come in in time, then we may have maxed out on the policy.”

She added that it is also likely that there will have to be protracted negotiations before insurance money is received. It might also be desirable to seek an initial grant from FEMA for the $40-million deductible, to allow the project to get started.

Schriber expressed concern that the law apparently mandates only an expensive repair.

“If the only way we were going to fix the building was in accord with the FEMA standards of bringing it up to where it was when the quake occurred, we would still be better off than not fixing it at all,” he said.

He and Eberts both said there is no question the building is in a weaker state than before the Northridge earthquake and would not fare as well today in a similar temblor.