24 KILLED IN APARTMENT FIRE
A blowtorch effect was created when a fleeing resident left open a door and allowed oxygen to reach the smoldering fire.
Twenty-four persons died in an arson fire in an old four-story apartment just west of downtown Los Angeles in the predawn hours of last Sept. 4.
The victims were, in effect, incinerated when flames flashed down a second and third-floor hallway after a door was opened for the fleeing occupants to exit, fire officials said.
At 4.27 a m., L A. City Fire Department’s operation control division communications center, received a telephone report of a fire at the Dorothy Mae Apartments, 821 West Sunset Blvd.
Dispatched were Task Forces 3 and 4 (two triples and a truck), Engine 6, Squad 4 (four men) and Battalion Chief Glen Dinger.
Engine 6 responding east on Sunset was first to arrive and, according to Deputy Chief Albert Schultz, the incident commander, saw smoke at the rear of the building and thought they had a rubbish or mattress fire.
“They laid a 1 ½-inch line along the west side of the building, and as they opened the rear door they saw the pile of bodies on the second floor at the bottom of the stairs,” Schultz said.
Then they saw some flames in the corridor and the captain requested two additional task forces, for Task Force 3 to begin rescue on the third and fourth floors, and Task Force 4, the second. Since the portable radio could not reach the communications center. Task Force 4 relayed the 4:32 a m. request for additional task forces and Battalion 2 requested two rescue ambulances. Task Forces 20 and 9 were immediately dispatched along with two more ambulances at 4:35 a m. and three additional task forces at 4:40 a m.
Upon arrival at 4:54 a m.. Division 1 Commander Dudley Sorenson asked for two more task forces, two additional battalion chiefs and three more rescue ambulances.
Photos by Mike Meadows, Los Angeles Times
Before the fire was knocked down at 5:48 a m., 19 companies and eight rescue ambulances, plus support units, City Fire Chief Allen Evansen, police, Red Cross, dozens of media crews, all were at the scene of the grim tragedy.
Although there was a rumored smell of gasoline when the first fire fighters entered the building, there was no report on the cause of the fire until Sept. 17 when Evansen and police investigators held a news conference to report that analysis of debris conducted by L.A. County Sheriff’s Laboratory and Federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division Laboratory showed “conclusively that an accelerant” was used to start the fire.
Oxygen, the chief explained, released into the hallway from an opened door, fueled the fire and created the blowtorch-like effect that killed the victims as they tried to escape down the rear stairwell.
“There was never that much fire, but it was that initial blast which did most of the damage.”
Eighteen were dead at the scene, six others died later, and many others were seriously burned or injured when they jumped from upper floor windows.
Evansen speculated that the fire had been burning for perhaps 30 minutes and had reached a stage of incomplete combustion lacking adequate oxygen to continue burning until the door was opened.
In reconstructing the early stages of the incident, Schultz noted that crews from the initial attack forces took 1 1/2 -inch lines into the second and third floors to knock down the incipient fire while the truck men used ground ladders to bring down victims who had not panicked and jumped from the upper floors. As many as 40 were rescued in this manner.
“There was never that much fire,” Schultz said, “but it was that initial blast which did most of the damage.”
The building was completely up to the city’s Ponet Square fire ordinance which mandated smoke alarms and enclosing of stairwells and installation of fire doors. The opening of the rear door ironically provided the fuel for the fire to spread.
The ordinance was named for the downtown area Ponet Square Apartment fire which killed 19 in 1970. This fire broke out in a first-floor lobby and spread up an open stairwell and raced along upper-floor hallways. The ordinance was passed, but owners were given time to bring buildings up to the new code.
In 1973 a similar fire occurred at the old Stratford Arms on West Sixth St., killing 25, again starting in the lobby and leaping up open stairwells. The city council then ended the moratorium and hotel owners had until 1976 to bring their buildings into compliance.
City officials also speculated that the Dorothy Mae was overcrowded.
