SUPERVISORS ORDER REPORT ON FITNESS OF HOME.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors directed Children and Family Services to report on whether the department has an open case file on a Palmdale family whose two children died in a house fire last month and to report on whether it requires homes to have smoke detectors.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, whose district includes Palmdale, asked for the report after a Feb. 20 fire killed Racheall Fuentes, 7, and Joseph Jacobo, 4, and injured Jacob Jacobo, 3, and the children's uncle, Nathan Maropulos, 22.

In December, the children's grandfather and mother were awarded a $200,000 settlement by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for a 1997 incident in which county officials said the home had wrongfully been declared unfit and six children put into foster care.

``Unfortunately, this tragic accident indicates that the house may have been unfit,'' the Antonovich motion read.

The Department of Children and Family Services was directed by the board to report back March 19 in a closed session on whether there is an open case file on the family.

A spokeswoman for Children and Family Services said the department could not publicly discuss whether there is an open file on the family. In general, the department does consider the lack of smoke detectors in determining whether a home is fit, the spokeswoman said.

The cause of the Feb. 20 fire is still under investigation. The blaze appeared to have broken out in the kitchen, fire officials said.

The three children were found by firefighters in a smoke-filled rear bedroom. Their uncle was found badly burned in the kitchen.

Another uncle and aunt got out of the house on their own.

In December, Los Angeles County supervisors agreed to pay Theodore Maropulos and Daniele Fuentes $200,000 to settle a civil-rights lawsuit they filed after an Aug. 4, 1997, incident at their home.

Authorities said that during a probation check, they found Theodore and Donna Maropuloses' daughter, then 16, smoking marijuana in her bedroom and the house in a ``deplorable condition,'' with clothing piled on the floor and no food in the cabinets.

Theodore Maropulos, Fuentes and her boyfriend were arrested on suspicion of child endangerment. All three were released two days later without being charged. Marijuana charges were later dropped against the 16-year-old.

Theodore Maropulos said the girl had an ordinary tobacco cigarette, the kitchen was stocked with food and that their home, a 1950s tract house, was no different than their neighbors'.

The day the children were taken away, Los Angeles County Department of Children's and Family Services workers said in a report that they were unable to verify the home's conditions because sheriff's deputies denied their request to inspect it.

When DCFS staffers finally inspected the home three weeks later, they decided it was not an unfit residence for children, county documents show. The children were then returned.

County officials say they offered the settlement because if the case were to go to trial, a jury could find that Maropulos and Fuentes were arrested without probable cause and that the six children should not have been removed from the family's home for three weeks.

At the time of the settlement, Theodore Maropulos said the family believed it was singled out since the late 1980s because a former neighbor with whom the family had a dispute was a friend of sheriff's deputies.

Theodore Maropulos said the house was inspected just 13 days before the Aug. 4, 1997, arrests, after the Department of Children's and Family Services received a report that the children were being neglected.

Department officials said that allegation was unfounded, documents show. The DCFS report said five abuse or neglect allegations made against the family as far back as 1988 had all been ruled unfounded.