1970 — Sep 13, Fire, Ponet Square Hotel and Apartments, Los Angeles, CA — 19
–19 Grad. “Deadly fires brought changes in L.A. safety laws.” Los Angeles Times, 12-9-2014.
–19 Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive. “The Ponet Square Hotel Fire.”
–19 National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996.
–19 NFPA. Summary of Fire Incidents 1934-2006 in Hotel Fires in the United States. 2008.
–19 National Fire Sprinkler Association. F.Y.I. 1999, p. 6.
–19 Watrous. “Two Fatal Hotel Fires. The Ponet Square…” Fire Journal, 65/1, Jan 1971, p. 33.
Narrative Information
Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive: “The Building
“The four-story Ponet Square Hotel was built in 1907 at 1249 South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. The hotel stood on an irregularly shaped lot on the northwest corner of the intersection of Grand Avenue and Pico Street, with its front facing east on Grand….
“An unsprinklered basement under-laid the north half of the building. Most of this was once a ballroom, with an un-pierced division wall cutting it off from a rear boiler-room. The ballroom was now unused space as local codes forbid combustibles in unsprinklered basements in the fire district involved. The first floor (12,000 square feet) completely covers the lot, with the exception of an areaway providing egress from the rear center of the building to a parking lot on the north. The south half of the first floor housed a commercial occupancy selling mobile homes and tools and machinery. Most of the space was used for storage. The hotel occupied the north half of the first floor, with a row of rooms along the north exterior wall and along the north half of the west exterior wall. The hotel entrance was off Grand, and led to a lobby with an eleven-foot ceiling.
“Standing in the lobby entrance and looking west toward the rear of the building, one would have seen beyond the public area of the building, left to right: the elevator, the stairs to the second floor, and the hotel desk. Behind the desk was an eight-wooden partition which, with a similar partition on its right, had been used to section off the southwest corner of the original ornate lobby. This 12 by 22-foot area was used for linen storage and provided access to the former ballroom-basement stairs. The fire originated in the linen room.
“A hall on the north of the linen room ran back to a north-south hall serving the rooms on the west wall. The south end of the north-south hall exited to a hall that ran west to the rear hotel exit near the center of the west wall. Near the point where these last two halls joined, stairs ran up to join the lobby stairs to the second floor at a mid-height landing. This stair, the elevator and the exterior fire-escape drop ladders were the means of egress from the second floor.
“The second, third and fourth floors (11,000 square feet each) were nearly identical and essentially u-shaped, with the base of the U on Grand Avenue. The north and south wings were constant in width so that a “V” shaped light well opened to the west and one could look out over the abutting one-story commercial. The rooms were served by an H-shaped hall system. The two east-west halls looked out windows to the west and led out windows to exterior fire escapes on the east. The north-south hall started at the southern east-west hall but crossed the northern east-west hall all the way to the north wall, where it provided access to stairs leading to the roof. A second set of stairs near the south end of the north-south hall went up from the second to the fourth floor. Most of the rooms were built as two-room suites with kitchen and bath. Each of the two rooms were entered from a common short corridor off the main hall. The bath was entered off the sort corridor. The kitchen opened off one of the rooms. (As used at the time of the fire, each room was separately rented with bath privileges, as was any other room large enough to hold a bed.) The baths and kitchens were next to the halls and the rooms were on exterior or light-well walls. A two-room penthouse suite served by the elevator was located on the roof between the light well and the Grand Avenue building wall.
“The building’s exterior walls were brick, with lime mortar and no reinforcement. The two street walls had a veneer of finish brick laid against a waterproofing building felt, with some ties to the main structure. In 1951 the parapet walls on both streets were removed to roof level and replaced by a reinforced three-foot concrete tie beam. (This probably prevented wall collapse. The veneer brick fell away in sheets, and all brick separated during demolition.) The light-well exterior walls were wood stud and stucco.
“The first-floor commercial area was wood post and girder construction. All hotel occupancy interior walls were wood stud. All floor-ceiling joists were 16 inches and two or three inches thick, depending on span. Interior walls and ceilings were plaster on wood lathe. The wood roof deck with “built-up” roof was supported by 2″x8″ rafters laid over a system of wooden trusses.
“The stairways were open.
“Most kitchens and baths were served by vertical vents. Eleven vents were triangularly shaped, 6.25 square feet in area, and served a single room on each floor, with one also serving a first-floor bath. Eight vents were triangularly shaped, 12.5 square feet in area and served two rooms on each upper floor, with one also serving two first-floor rooms.
“One vent was square, 6.25 feet in area, served baths or rooms on each of its sides on each upper floor and was open to the lobby ceiling directly above the linen room point of origin. Each room served, opened to the shaft through a three-foot square (the square vent openings were smaller) wood, double-hung sash with plain glass. The ceiling over kitchens, baths and abutting room closets was furred down 18 inches with the furred space open to the non-fire stopped 2″x16″ joists above, thus exposing most of the joist channels. The furred space was open to the vertical vents through 18″x36″ louvers. All vertical vents were open to the attic and terminated on the roof beneath a metal cover. The furred spaces over kitchens and baths was separated from halls and rooms by a single thickness of wood lathe and plaster….
“The Fire: “Three reports, not necessarily listed chronologically, given some idea of conditions before the alarm was turned in:
“A witness, considered reliable as to time, arrived in a parking lot across the street from the hotel parking lot at 0510 hours. He sat in his car for a few minutes relaxing. He noticed the lights come on in the hotel’s first floor and then on the second floor. He was wondering why the lights came on when he realized they were flames.
“A retired man, in Room 302 on the third floor, awoke and asked his wife the time. Neither sees well, and they did not turn on the light; but she said it was five o’clock. He noticed smoke and looked out the window. Reflected in the opposite light-well windows were flames he believed to be in Room 301 to the east of his. He didn’t think they could make it down the hall; so he urged his wife to go out the window to the first-floor roof below. She refused and he pushed her out. He hung from the window sill and dropped down beside his wife to find her right hand fractured. He thinks they were on the roof 20 minutes before fire apparatus arrived.
“A man in Room 217 directly above the lobby linen room smelled smoke. He opened his hallway door and the hall was full of smoke. He put a towel over his face, went out into the hall and awakened the occupants of four nearby rooms. He went to the stairs leading from the second floor to the lobby, and as he started down from the mid-height landing, he saw flames coming out of the linen area and reaching the main stair. He retreated to the landing and went down the stairs to the rear exit hall. He went to the manager’s room and woke him up. The man then went past the linen room and out the lobby door. As he left the building, the whole lobby seemed to explode in flames. He then ran across the street to a store on the corner and looking back, saw flames coming out the lobby entrance.
“Three of the injured state; “I was awakened at 0500.”
The 24-hour clock times shown below are from the dispatcher’s tape recording:
| 0531 | The dispatcher received a call from a store across Grand from the hotel: “There is a hotel on fire at Pico and Grand. (What is burning?) It’s burning in the lobby — it’s all over — the hotel looks like it is going up.” |
| 0532 | Task Force 10 was dispatched by amplified voice: “You have a fire in a hotel lobby.” Firemen in the second-floor dormitory a block and a half away looked out the window. There was no doubt. Heavy Duty Task Force 9 was dispatched at the same time. |
| 0534 | Task Force 10 Commander upon arrival at the hotel reported the lobby well involved, people hanging out the south and east windows and asked for a second-alarm assignment. The screams of hotel residents could be clearly heard throughout his radio message. |
“TF 10 Commander could see the fire rolling out the lobby entrance, endangering the people hanging out the windows and preventing use of the adjacent fire escape. He ordered a 2 1/2″ line with spray nozzle into the lobby and went to the north side of the building where the parking lot gave access. He saw fire move up from floor to floor at the windows off the north stairs. He returned to the apparatus radio to direct incoming companies and remembers hoping those people coming down didn’t hit his men. Truck 10 made rescues on Grand with aerial and ground ladders….
“The wood stud and stucco walls of the light well collapsed. All of the building inside the hallways was rubble, resting on the first floor. The rubble was about level with the second-floor hall toward the Grand Avenue side, reached the third floor on the north and south sides of light well and was several feet deep in the center of the building. The southern end of the north section of the west wall leaned inward about 18 inches, and structural cracks were evident at the second and third-floor levels. The north part of this wall appeared to have a slight bow, either a bulge at the center or a lean inward at the top. The Pico Street wall appeared straight as the fire was controlled, but later appeared to lean inward slightly at the mid-point. The other walls appeared to be stable, even though bricks in varying amounts had been loosened around window openings by heavy streams.
“The rooms on the building’s exterior perimeter outside the hallways were reasonably intact structurally. Some forty-floor ceilings over these rooms on the Grand Avenue side had collapsed and most of the fourth-floor ceiling plaster either fell or had the wood lathe burned away. Fire damage in the exterior rooms was less on successively lower floors, with some on the second south being almost untouched.
“Very little fire entered the commercial occupancies in the south half of the first floor. Most of the merchandise was recovered, dry and usable. The lobby had been well involved, but the lobby desk could be identified, and the register and other records were recovered; wet, but legible. Except for the room in the northeast corner of the first floor, which was burned out, rooms on the north wall showed only smoke and heat damage — the contents were not water soaked.
“The structure emitted black smoke in volume until almost 1200 hours….
“It was almost certain that the bodies of fatalities were inside. From Fire Department pre-fire planning records and the hotel manager’s memory, drawings showing rooms and halls were prepared. This was to pinpoint the locations where bodies were found to assist in the identification process by the Coroner.
“Red Cross and Fire personnel used hotel and hospital records, tracked down and talked with survivors and used other means to determine the people in the building at the time of the fire and those who had escaped. This was complicated by the fact that many registered residents used aliases; some occupants were unregistered; and four persons listed by hospitals as injured were neither registered at the hotel nor known by occupants….
“During the afternoon of September 13, nine bodies were recovered by a search of the perimeter rooms. The tenth was seen at about the second floor level, above the lobby area but pinned in place by several feet of rubble….
“Demolition work started early on September 15, with firemen assigned to watch the rubble pile and removed materials for bodies. By 1900 hours, three bodies (#10, 11, 12) had been recovered. Work continued through the night. Early the next morning, body 13 was located and by 1600 hours three more (#14, 15, 16) were removed. By nightfall the contractor’s men were worn out so work stopped until morning. During the daylight hours of September 17, no additional bodies were found. Work again stopped overnight. By 0825 on September 18, the last two bodies, for a total of 18, were removed. (The nineteenth fatality was a jumper removed during fire fighting.)….
“The occupants of the building were working or retired people of moderate means. Most were Mexican, some Italian, at least one Filipino, and the manager was Japanese.
“Hotel records, the manager’s memory, and conversations with survivors indicate that there were 117 residents or guests in the hotel at the time of the fire.
“There were nineteen known fatalities; one who jumped from the fourth floor and 18 who died in the structure — probably from asphyxia. Some of the bodies were so badly burned that cause of death could not be fixed. Thirteen of the victims were fourth-floor occupants. Of these, one jumped; five were found in their rooms; one was found in the adjoining room of the suite; one was found in the rear north hall some distance from his front room; five were found in the rubble. These were found at locations indicating four may have died in their rooms and one may have been in the hall, but this is pure conjecture. Two fatalities were third-floor occupants; one found in his room and one in the rubble below. Four fatalities were second-floor occupants. Two found in their rooms; one in the adjoining room; and one in the hall just outside the room.
“There were 25 known treated injured, with injuries ranging from fractured back to compound fractures of both legs and both ankles to minor cuts and burns. Fifteen were still in the hospital three days after the fire.
“Nine of the injured were from the fourth floor. One jumped, holding his mattress to land on in the parking lot. Five jumped to the first-floor roof and one hit on the edge and went to the ground. One came down the north fire escape and jumped to the ground. One was rescued by firemen.
“Thirteen of the injured were from the third floor. Five jumped to the first-floor roof, three slid bedding or rope, one came down the fire escape, one jumped for the first-floor roof and missed; and it is not known how three escaped.
“Four of the injured were from the second floor, two were rescued by firemen, one came down the fire escape and one jumped. Undoubtedly there were others injured, but none are believed serious….” (Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive. “The Ponet Square Hotel Fire.”)
Watrous/NFPA: “….The building had no automatic fire protection, no watchman service, and no night clerk on duty….” [p. 33] “The building had 20 vertical vents…” [p. 34]
(Watrous. Laurence D. “Two Fatal Hotel Fires. The Ponet Square Apartment Hotel.” National Fire Protection Association Fire Journal, Vol. 65, No. 1, January 1971, pp. 33-37.)
Newspaper
Grad/Los Angeles Times, 2014: “….Sept. 13, 1970 Ponet Square Hotel and Apartments, 1249 S. Grand Ave. Fatalities: 19. Result: The council passed the so-called Ponet doors ordinance, which mandated that buildings of more than two stories have enclosed stairways and corridors and that doors be capable of holding back a fire for an hour when closed.” (Grad, Shelby. “Deadly fires brought changes in L.A. safety laws.” Los Angeles Times, 12-9-2014.)
Sources
Grad, Shelby. “Deadly fires brought changes in L.A. safety laws.” Los Angeles Times, 12-9-2014. Accessed 2-25-2020 at: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/los-angeles-times/20141209/282544426636844
Los Angeles Fire Department. Historical Archive. “The Ponet Square Hotel Fire.” Accessed 8/10/2010 at: http://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/MajorIncident-index.htm
National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996, 2010. Accessed at: http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=1352&itemID=30955&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20statistics/Key%20dates%20in%20fire%20history&cookie%5Ftest=1
National Fire Protection Association. Summary of Fire Incidents 1934-2006 in Hotel Fires in the United States as Reported to the NFPA, with Ten or more Fatalities. Quincy, MA: NFPA, One-Stop Data Shop, Fire Analysis and Research Division, January 2008, 4 pages. Accessed at: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/Press%20Room/Hotelfirefatalitiesreport.pdf
National Fire Sprinkler Association, Inc. F.Y.I. – Fire Sprinkler Facts. Patterson, NY: NFSA, November 1999, 8 pages. Accessed at: http://www.firemarshals.org/data/File/docs/College%20Dorm/Administrators/F1%20-%20FIRE%20SPRINKLER%20FACTS.pdf
Watrous. Laurence D. “Two Fatal Hotel Fires. The Ponet Square Apartment Hotel.” National Fire Protection Association Fire Journal, Vol. 65, No. 1, January 1971, p. 33-37.