LAUSD DEFENDS SCHOOL DESIGN; OFFICIALS SAY VENTS WILL CUT GAS THREAT.Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer Insisting students' lives were never in danger, Los Angeles school The Los Angeles School of Urbanism is an academic movement emerged during the mid-1980s, loosely based at the University of Southern California and UCLA, that poses a challenge to the dominant Chicago School of Urbanism. officials said Wednesday they had planned to install vents in a vault at the Belmont Learning Complex that state investigators now warn could trap explosive gas. But environmental officials said the district never submitted those plans in writing, even after the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control asked for them. Without ventilation, department inspectors warned, methane gas rising from an oil field beneath the school could fill the room and potentially trigger an explosion. School district spokesman Erik Nasarenko said no plans were submitted to the state agency because district officials are still trying to determine the amount of gas present before finalizing the ventilation system's design. ``Until we have the scientific data, we won't know what kind of system we need,'' he said. Hamid Saebfar, chief of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, cleanup operations for the Department of Toxic Substances Control, agreed that the vents should be designed to meet conditions at the site. But he said the district should have notified his inspectors in writing that they at least had a plan to circulate air out of the room. Instead, district personnel mentioned the proposed ventilation system ventilation system Public health An air system designed to maintain negative pressure and exhaust air properly, to minimize the spread of TB and other respiratory pathogens in a health care facility to inspectors but never produced the requested written details, he said. ``They raised these issues with my staff, and my staff told them to submit it in writing,'' he said. ``They never submitted it.'' State officials notified the school district in a May 7 letter that inspectors ``observed potential ignition ignition, apparatus for igniting a combustible mixture. The German engineer Nikolaus A. Otto, in his first gas engine, used flame ignition; another method was heating a metal tube to incandescence. and explosion sources within the vault.'' Saebfar wants the district to change some of the equipment in the vault "In the Vault" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, written on September 18, 1925 and first published in the November 1925 issue of the amateur press journal Tryout. , which houses electrical panels and switches. The school's contractor is using regular switches rather than a more expensive, spark-proof kind, Saebfar said, posing the threat of igniting some of the explosive gas. ``What if you have a situation where the (ventilation) system fails and gas builds in the vault?'' he said. District officials Wednesday sought to assure the public that the electrical vault at the half-finished high school poses no immediate threat of fire or explosion. The room has not been finished and remains open for air to circulate, Chief Administrative Officer A chief administrative officer (CAO) is responsible for administrative management of private, public or governmental corporations. The CAO is one of the highest ranking members of an organization, managing daily operations and usually reporting directly to the chief executive David Koch There are several people called David Koch:
tr.v. paved, pav·ing, paves 1. To cover with a pavement. 2. To cover uniformly, as if with pavement. 3. To be or compose the pavement of. . Potential problems with the vault are just the latest trouble to plague Belmont. Following the discovery last fall of unusually high concentrations of methane on the property, the district launched a new round of environmental tests Environmental tests are used to verify a piece of equipment can withstand the rigors of harsh environments, for example:
At more than $170 million, Belmont is believed to be the nation's most expensive high school. |
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