Committee delays consideration of temblor-damage inspection rules.

The Los Angeles City Council's ad hoc Earthquake Recovery Committee last week opted to delay full council consideration of a controversial earthquake-damage inspection and repair ordinance and to study the situation for at least another month.

Committee chairman City Councilman Hal Bernson and others cited concerns over the extent, cost, methodology and timetables of the inspection program proposed for some 400 steel-frame buildings in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside.

Public service and real estate professionals also pointed to continued uncertainty about the adequacy of repair methods.

Tests conducted at the University of Texas this spring -- follow-ups to which are currently under way -- revealed that steel-frame structures aren't as flexible in earthquakes as the engineering community had previously assumed.

Recent ultrasonic inspections of at least two modern local steel-frame office buildings in the Southland also found previously undiscovered damage to several "connections" tying buildings' steel beams and columns together.

These discoveries helped convince the committee to consider a mandatory inspection program. The tests also spur questions about prevailing construction codes.

On top of these issues, the continued local real estate recession has already left many income-property owners financially strapped and inspection costs woul entail yet another economic burden.

As proposed, the ordinance would give owners 120 days from the date of notification to expose and ultrasonically inspect 10 to 15 percent of the connections, and report findings to the city's Building & Safety Department.

Owners finding damage to building frames would have another 90 days to secure repair permits. All the inspection and repair work would have to be completed within one year of the original notification.

But speakers at a committee meeting last week claimed that inspections alone would likely cost $2,000 per connection and perhaps as much as $4,500 per connection in residential buildings containing asbestos, noted Richard Holguin, assistant chief of Building & Safety's building bureau.

Proposals included inspection of a half-dozen or so "key stress points," particularly at ground-floor ceilings of low-rise structures, added Martha Cox-Nitikman, manager of government affairs for the Building Owners & Managers Association's Greater L.A. chapter.

Holguin and Cox-Nitikman also noted the committee heard talk about use of emerging "radar," "x-ray" and/or "gamma ray" technologies. Speakers stressed that inspection methods -- if effectively applied to modern buildings -- wouldn't require the costly opening of building walls needed for ultrasonic inspections.

Addressing the repair issue, BOMA/L.A. Executive Director Geoff Ely asked the committee to amend the draft ordinance to delay the mandatory repair start-date until a month after the follow-up University of Texas studies have been completed. He also requested extending the timetable for completing repair work to two years.