AREA HOSPITAL SUES WELDING-METAL MAKER.

Byline: Associated Press 

The welding metal used in hundreds of West Coast buildings cracks in earthquakes, a $10 million lawsuit claims.

The city of Los Angeles last July banned the use of the weld metal known as ``120'' or ``E70T-4'' in new building construction, along with certain other weld metals.

Richard Holguin, chief of the city's engineering bureau, said he is convinced that the metal ``fractures very, very abruptly.''

So do the owners of St. John's Medical Plaza in Santa Monica. The five-story building was declared unsafe and evacuated for six months in 1995 after inspectors found that the January 1994 Northridge Earthquake had cracked two supporting columns. The cracks sheared completely through the columns at six spots.

Engineers and inspectors said the cracks started in the weld metal that linked the building's steel horizontal beams and vertical columns.

``The frames were not supposed to crack up - they were supposed to bend and yield,'' said George M. Soneff, a lawyer for St. John's. ``We believe the E70T-4 weld metal was the primary culprit. . . . It is a defective product.''

A $10 million lawsuit filed by the hospital in May names Cleveland-based Lincoln Electric Co., which distributed the welding metal.

Holguin said he assumes that most of the city's 1,500 steel-frame buildings have been welded with E70T-4 but officials don't plan to require their retrofitting because the costs make it impractical, Holguin said.

Lincoln has denied wrongdoing and has vowed to vigorously defend against the lawsuit, which is scheduled for a May trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Lincoln contends that the fault lies in the building's design and workmanship, not the welding metal, which ideally is supposed to hold firm during an earthquake while horizontal beams bend to relieve the stress.