1 Killed, 36 Hurt as Building Collapses

An aging Echo Park apartment house cited two years ago for a damaged foundation shifted and collapsed early Friday, killing one man and injuring 36 more of its low-income tenants.

The two-story wood and stucco complex, built in 1924, was cited by Los Angeles officials in 1998, but it was unclear to what extent the foundation might have contributed to the collapse. City inspectors signed off on mandated repairs several months later, records and interviews showed.

Juan Francisco Pineda, 31, was crushed to death and his wife was injured as the front section of the building gave way and fell shortly after 8 a.m., authorities said. Dozens of residents--mainly day laborers, garment workers and their children--frantically escaped through windows or were escorted to safety by firefighters before being taken to emergency evacuation centers in the neighborhood.

More than 50 people were left suddenly homeless by the collapse. Many thought they were experiencing an earthquake when the 24-unit building abruptly buckled soon after many children had left for school.

Ominous warning signs had been evident for days, according to some residents. Those signs included plumbing leaks, new cracks in ceilings and inability to close doors properly.

“Every apartment you went into, there was a problem,” said Ana Avila, 38, who was injured by a falling television. Two nights earlier, she said, a sizable leak started in the basement.

Crying as she stood with the aid of a crutch outside the slumping structure, Avila said: “We’ve been telling them to fix this place for so long, but we always get the same answer. It’s always, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Is this what it takes to get it fixed? It took a life.”

Cracks in interior and exterior walls had become so numerous that it scared the family, added Avila’s teenage daughter, Marisol Hernandez.

“My dad said yesterday, ‘Let’s move out--this building is old and it’s going to fall,’ ” she said.

Building manager Felipe Ordonez, 52, was questioned by police Friday. In an interview, he denied being aware of any significant structural weaknesses and said he immediately responded to tenants’ complaints about plumbing leaks and other minor problems.

“I just don’t know what happened,” said Ordonez, who had to flee from a second-floor apartment with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. His wife and daughter were treated at a nearby hospital for minor injuries. “I always tried to do the best I could to take care of the building.”

The owner of the building at the time its damaged foundation was cited by inspectors was Barry David Wallman, a Camarillo land baron with extensive apartment holdings throughout Los Angeles, records indicate.

Wallman, a target of at least two lawsuits alleging substandard conditions in his buildings, attended a May 1999, hearing at which city officials addressed the adequacy of repairs to the damaged foundation in Echo Park. However, in a somewhat mysterious transaction, Wallman sold the property two months later to one of his tenants, Desiderio Martinez. Property records reflected only a partial payment of $20,000. City officials said Friday that they were uncertain who owns the building.

A call to Wallman’s home in Camarillo was answered Friday by a man whose only comment was, “I’m sorry, we have nothing to say.” A woman who drove up to the spacious residence, in a gated community of million-dollar homes, avoided a reporter while hurrying inside.

Wallman’s most glaring previous notoriety over building safety conditions occurred in 1996, when he was ordered to pay $9,371 in fines and other costs because of problems at a 24-unit complex in Hollywood. In that case, investigators for the city’s Slum Housing Task Force found a litany of violations, including an open sewer, an uncapped natural gas line, missing heaters, broken windows, rodents, cockroaches, leaking pipes, sagging floors and buckled walls.

The fines were imposed after Wallman failed to obey several orders to make repairs, the city attorney’s office said. Court records at the time indicated that the manager was carrying a gun while collecting rents and that children ate meals while roaches fell to the table from a crumbling ceiling.

The $320,000 Spanish-style structure that collapsed Friday was found to have cracks in its foundation during the 1998 inspection. But those cracks were not deemed immediately life-threatening, said spokesman Bob Steinbach of the Building and Safety Department.

The cracks--listed among 17 violations, including damaged smoke detectors and lack of fire extinguishers--were not seen as sufficient to justify vacating the building, he said.

Repairs to the foundation were carried out, and officials stopped short of connecting the damage to Friday’s collapse.

“I can tell you we have the greatest minds at Building and Safety looking at this and we can’t make a determination of what caused it,” Steinbach said.

Attempts to reach a conclusion might have to conclude quickly, he added, because the half-toppled wreckage poses such a danger that it will soon be torn down. The complex, cordoned off by police tape, was judged so likely to collapse even further that coroner’s crews were unable throughout the day to remove Pineda’s body. Covered with a sheet, the body lay visible from the street until 7 p.m. as tenants and their relatives clustered outside.

Pineda’s wife, Mima Vasquez, told family members she was on the phone complaining to a city official about the trembling of the building at the time it fell, according to a cousin, Ingrid Rodriguez. The Pinedas had lived in the building eight years and had just put up their Christmas tree, Rodriguez said.

Mima was preparing the couple’s young children for school when the rumbling started. Francisco was standing in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. He was buried under the rubble with only his arm poking out.

Mima and the children escaped through a broken window, Rodriguez said.

Two brothers, Luis and Roberto Hernandez, who shared a cramped first-floor unit for $425 a month, said they noticed a sign of trouble Thursday night when their front door no longer closed completely. They had to leave it unlatched throughout the night--and had difficulty wrenching it open again as they scrambled for their lives.

“All of a sudden everything started to fall,” Luis, 16, said in Spanish. “I was so scared, I never thought we’d get out.”

The brothers said they were half-asleep when a woman began banging on doors in the central hallway, shouting: “The building is falling, the building is falling! Everyone has to get out--the building is falling!”

They scrambled to put on their clothes and were bombarded by debris as they tried to escape. Luis was badly scratched and appeared to be nearly in shock before being taken to a nearby hospital.

Most of the 36 with injuries were treated at the scene. Eleven people were hospitalized, some only briefly.

The incident could have been much worse if it had occurred even an hour earlier, officials said. Nineteen children who lived in the complex were already at Logan Street School when the collapse occurred.

The Angelus Temple Family Center was converted into an evacuation center. Psychologists and social workers were interviewing many of the 75 people there. Some, including Dora Barreras, were dealing with obvious trauma.

Barreras had been bathing her 2-year-old daughter, Diana, when the building began to shake.

“Then one side of the room tilted down,” she said. “The floor and the roof went to one side like a hill. And me and my baby were trapped. We both started screaming, ‘Help! Help us!’ Diana started screaming, ‘Daddy, open the door, please open the door!’ ”

Finally, Dora kicked open the door, which was jammed by the weight of the collapsed roof, and ran outside with her daughter wrapped in a towel.

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Times staff writers Ana Beatriz Cholo, Tina Daunt, David Ferrell, Jill Leovy, Jean Merl, Margaret Ramirez and Ken Reich and Times researcher Vicki Gallay contributed to this story.