Devastation at the Scene Awes Even Firefighters

The scene was both sickening and compelling.

As Los Angeles fire officials began to survey the damage at the First Interstate Bank building, even seasoned firefighters stood slack-jawed at the devastation.

Piles of black metal, twisted and unrecognizable, littered sidewalks and streets around the tower, amid the dark-tinted glass shards that rained down from the building.

Inside, what had been cheery, modern offices were now gaping concrete expanses covered with layers of ash and soot and pieces of scorched and melted junk that once had been furniture, walls and machines.

Charred Fragments

Late into the afternoon, water continued to stream down the facade and charred fragments of documents blew out of the open floors and into the streets below.

Inside, the lobby was 3 inches deep in water. The eerie, hollow echo of dripping water, a sound more associated with a cave or cavern than a skyscraper, reverberated everywhere.

But here in the lobby of Los Angeles’ tallest building, it was the sound of disaster.

The carpets were saturated, allowing a person’s foot to sink in and leave an impression like on wet sand at the beach. White acoustic ceiling tiles littered the floor and slowly turned to mush as they lay in the puddles.

Scores of empty canteens and oxygen tanks lay in piles at the bottom of the main stairwell that firefighters had used during the night. Although most of the fire trucks had gone, hoses still ran every which way across the floor.

Tinted Glass

Only a few lights were working, and most of the light in the building filtered through the tinted glass, throwing an odd hue onto what was once a brightly painted cafeteria on the sixth floor. Amid the strewn chairs and pieces of ceiling were reminders of normalcy: a flyer for the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at First Interstate Bank and the $4.25 enchilada special.

The 12th and 13th floors--where the fire started and which suffered most of the damage--were still closed to all but arson and homicide investigators.

But after city building inspectors declared the tower structurally safe, reporters were let onto the 14th and 15th floors to see the worst of damage and to the 16th floor to see where firefighters finally brought the blaze to a halt.

On the 14th floor, there was little left besides twisted metal fragments of the suspended ceiling and a thick paste--often a foot deep or more--that covered the floor, the product of ash and water that formed a mosaic in shades of gray. The remains of a desk produced a deeper shade; a personal computer a light gray. A wall left a puddle of black.

Piles of Ash

The windows were gone--blown out by the blaze or knocked out by firefighters--and the wind whipped through the open floor. The walls were reduced to piles of ash, and the ceilings were gone. Only the concrete-and-steel beam structure remained intact.

On the next floor up, damage was somewhat slighter. Rows of file cabinets stood with doors popped off at random, their contents nothing but a black dust.

Thousands of partially burned documents littered the area. A typewriter melted on its stand. Smoke still seeped out of a desk drawer. A potted plant was now just two charred sticks in a blackened bowl.

A doorknob lay half-submerged in the paste that apparently once had been an executive’s door. Three metal rings were all that remained of a notebook.

On the 16th floor, the firefighters had successfully made their stand against the flames that lapped up out of the lower floors. There was little apparent fire damage, but wind and water had taken their toll.

Coating of Soot

Long, flowing streamers of computer printouts billowed about the office, whipped around by the constant wind. Furniture was knocked about, and a thin black soot seemed to lay on every flat surface.

Except for the ever-present smell of smoke, the top floors were little hurt by the blaze, investigators said. The lower floors all suffered varying degrees of water damage.

And in the stairwells, running from floor to floor, were the shiny new pipes of the sprinkler system that was being installed. Officials say that, had it been in place, it might have confined the blaze to something as small as a wastepaper basket.