Massive Asbestos Cleanup Underway at Mall : Aftermath: Northridge Fashion Center will remove every fiber of carcinogen. Owner hopes clean image will boost business upon reopening.

NORTHRIDGE —  A few hours after the Jan. 17 earthquake, John Graham, vice president of property management at MEPC American Properties Inc., owner of the Northridge Fashion Center mall, made an urgent phone call from his Dallas office.

“I’m willing to bet there’s asbestos in there, laying on the floors” of the shopping mall, Graham told Lou Magnifico, construction manager at Professional Service Industries Inc., an asbestos abatement firm in Walnut.

Magnifico hurried that day to the mall and took pictures of the heaps of fallen ceiling tiles and drywall. When Graham saw the photos, he spotted the telltale gray, fluffy material amid the rubble and said, “Uh-oh.”

And so began a massive, multimillion-dollar asbestos cleanup and abatement effort at the Northridge mall, located about a mile from the epicenter and by far the most badly quake-damaged shopping center. Two other shopping malls, Topanga Plaza in Woodland Hills and Laurel Plaza in North Hollywood, have also undergone asbestos cleanups in the wake of the temblor, although nothing rivaling the undertaking at the Northridge mall, where the plan is to remove every bit of the remaining cancer-causing substance--even that which wasn’t dislodged in the quake.

“Asbestos is an emotional subject,” Graham acknowledged. Even though asbestos is considered safe if it is properly maintained, “our corporate philosophy is just take it out.”

MEPC, a subsidiary of British real estate concern MEPC PLC, purchased the Northridge Fashion Center in December as part of a $302-million acquisition of several American holdings. Now MEPC is hoping to turn its bad luck into opportunity. When the mall reopens in July--minus its six department stores, which will take longer to rebuild--MEPC hopes to publicize its squeaky-clean shopping center.

Asbestos is present in more than half of all commercial and residential buildings 15 years or older, authorities say, and in some younger than that. Asbestos has several positive properties, including being resistant to heat and very durable. Unfortunately, in recent decades it has been discovered that when asbestos materials are moved or broken, they can release microscopic fibers into the air. If inhaled, these fibers can cause lung disease and other cancers. The substance is considered safe when left intact.

In any building containing asbestos, experts say, it is necessary to test the air to see how many particles might have shaken free in the earthquake. Air pumps with filtering devices are used in the testing. If high levels of airborne asbestos are found, a cleanup might include misting the air to weigh down floating particles, wet wiping hard surfaces and using big vacuums with special filters that catch the tiny fibers. And workers doing the cleanup must don special protective gear that look like space suits, which are later disposed of.

Clothes and other porous items from stores that have asbestos will also be bagged and sent to asbestos-disposal sites.

Things took an odd turn on Thursday when police investigated a report that 20 members of an asbestos cleanup crew had walked off with new, asbestos-contaminated clothing from a Sears store at the Northridge mall. No one was arrested. Apparently it isn’t a crime to take clothes that were deemed rubbish and headed for a toxic-waste dump.

Sears, which owns its store, was responsible for the asbestos cleanup and had hired a crew from CST Environmental in Anaheim. Sage Khara, CST’s president, said he was outraged by the “theft” and fired those workers the same night. “It was a very devastating experience for us,” he said.

CST has also been doing emergency asbestos work for MEPC at most of the rest of the Northridge mall. Graham said that CMT has worked for his company for five years and they “have been reliable.”

This week CST and other companies will bid for a new asbestos cleanup contract at the Northridge mall. Meanwhile, security guards are patrolling to ensure nothing is stolen from stores during the cleanup. “We made it clear to CST that heads will roll if it happens with us,” Graham said.

Asbestos shaken loose in the quake has been a bigger problem at shopping malls than in many other large commercial structures in the Valley. One reason is that office and industrial buildings that suffered the worst quake damage were generally newer buildings made from concrete slabs, and many of those buildings don’t have asbestos.

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Also, many office buildings old enough to have had asbestos included in their original construction--say, some of those along Ventura Boulevard that were built in the 1960s and 1970s--had already had asbestos removed. “There is not nearly as much asbestos in the Valley as there was five years ago,” said Seth Dudley, senior vice president at real estate brokerage Julien J. Studley Inc. in Los Angeles.

Nonetheless, asbestos abatement contractors have been busy since the quake. Asbestos cleanups have also been done at Cal State Northridge, a Kaiser Permanente medical building in Granada Hills, and the Superior Court in Van Nuys.

The Northridge Fashion Center, Topanga Plaza and Laurel Plaza were built in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when asbestos was commonly used for fireproofing and insulation.

Those malls have all done some asbestos abatement in the past, as tenants moved out. But a comprehensive asbestos removal project would have meant closing the malls temporarily, resulting in lost business. And until the earthquake, there was no compelling reason to remove asbestos that was safely contained.

Even now, Topanga Plaza and Laurel Plaza will have some asbestos remaining.

David Reed, director of facilities services at CenterMark Properties, owner of Topanga Plaza, said that over the years, asbestos was removed from 75% of the mall and all common areas. But after the quake, about 16 shops were contaminated when ceiling tiles were dislodged, exposing sprayed-on asbestos, he said.

The total Topanga Plaza asbestos cleanup and abatement is estimated to have cost less than $250,000. Some shops will still have asbestos, Reed said, but it will be properly maintained and the air will continually be monitored.

At Laurel Plaza, some asbestos that had been sprayed in ceilings and walls was released in the quake and with subsequent building repairs. The asbestos cleanup will probably be completed this week, said General Manager Brian Pearson. When the mall reopens April 15, about some 80% of the asbestos will have been removed.

“There is no reason for concern,” Pearson said. “We are following the laws.”

Scott Lange, hazardous materials coordinator at Los Angeles property management company Shuwa Management, said that leaving asbestos in place is “absolutely safe as long as there’s correct air monitoring.” And Dudley believes the asbestos won’t prove a long-term detriment to property values. “Even in high rise office buildings with asbestos, I haven’t seen a significant affect on rental rates.”

But at the Northridge Fashion Center, owner MEPC is doing a full-blown abatement anyway, despite a cost that will run into the “seven figures,” according to MEPC President David Gruber. MEPC is expecting part of the cost to be covered under its earthquake insurance, although it is still negotiating with its insurer.

About 25 store sites and some common areas of the Northridge mall have asbestos that was sprayed on the structural steel. The day after the earthquake, 100 workers began sweeping the corridors of the mall from one end to the other, bagging anything suspected of being hazardous.

The crews immediately started monitoring the air, and sealed off tenant spaces with plastic. On the thick plastic covering shops with asbestos, the word “HOT” was spray-painted in red. MEPC plans to clean 15 feet into stores that don’t have asbestos in case fibers drifted in. Merchandise with hard surfaces, like jewelry, are being cleaned.

MEPC expects to complete the removal of all asbestos by May 1. Until then, floors are vacuumed each morning. Asbestos workers in contaminated areas wear respirators and the protective suits. They pass through mobile chambers where they remove the suits and bag them for disposal, then shower and change.

In many areas it’s already possible to look up and see nothing but steel beams covered with asbestos. One column was so twisted in the quake that the concrete and drywall fell off in sections, exposing asbestos.

It could have been much worse. An asbestos crew was in the Northridge mall doing an abatement of any empty shop the morning of the quake. They quit early, and left through an exit near Sears. An hour later the temblor hit and the thick concrete ceiling above the walkway collapsed onto the floor.