Report: Earthquake causes men’s prison to suffer ‘serious structural damage’

The decaying eyesore that is the Men's Central Jail has raised an impressively wide range of health and safety concerns in recent years. There have been the fires, the rats, the drugsthe mold and the ongoing violence, both from staff and inmates.

But a recent technical study reveals another problem: significant structural defects could turn the aging building into a death trap in the event of an earthquake.

The 72-page study commissioned by the county, completed in 2006, found that the prison's walls were weak, reinforcements were inadequate, and the concrete was so brittle that it could break or shatter under pressure.

“These kinds of vulnerabilities would definitely lead to a pretty catastrophic failure,” said Ryan Wilkerson, a structural engineer at Los Angeles-based Nabih Youssef Associates. After reviewing the report, Wilkerson told the Times that one of the main concerns was a partial collapse of the prison, which could “certainly” kill people. Without more detailed investigation, a full collapse cannot be ruled out, he said.

Like much of the city center, the prison is located on the Puente Hills thrust system, which experts say is capable of creating a powerful Earthquake of magnitude 7.5 and is one of the most dangerous fault systems in the region. It is the same system that rocked the region earlier this month when a 4.4 magnitude earthquake was strong enough to shake the interior of the prison.

Fixing the problem, the study said, would require major upgrades that would have cost an estimated $464 million a decade ago. Given the cost of inflation and interest payments, the cost would likely be much higher today. But none of that has been done so far – and officials said it is not on the agenda.

Last year, when The Times asked district officials for a list of ageing, endangered buildings intended for earthquake protectionThe Men's Central Jail was not included in the catalogue of 33 problem buildings.

In an emailed statement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said the jail was not on the list because the county has long planned to close it.

“For many years, the District has expressed its desire to replace the Men's Central Jail or to close and demolish the facility without replacing it,” the statement said. “As a result, many of the deferred maintenance and expensive building infrastructure upgrades have not been funded. Only the routine, day-to-day maintenance projects have been completed to keep the building functional.”

The report caused concern, if not surprise, among people who are incarcerated or work at the prison – or those who advocate on behalf of those incarcerated there.

“Conditions at the Men's Central Jail are intolerable for both our deputies who work there and the inmates,” said Richard Pippin, president of the Los Angeles Association of Deputy Sheriffs. “It is unfortunately no surprise that the actual structural integrity of the 60-year-old MCJ is being questioned.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which resurrected the 18-year-old report this month, pointed to the earthquake risk as further evidence that the plant should be closed.

“It's easier to ignore the dangers of earthquakes just because they're so rare,” said Corene Kendrick, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. “But this isn't an abstract problem, this is a real problem, and the county has simply ignored it, and it's just further proof of why the Men's Central Jail needs to be closed.”

The county's largest jail was built in 1963 to address overcrowding, but has long suffered from structural problems and ongoing maintenance issues. Supervisory inspectors regularly report flooded cells, broken toilets and cell doors that cannot be opened. The heating and cooling systems are so outdated that at least two inmates have died in recent years after Signs of hypothermia.

There are no smoke detectors or sprinkler systems in the prisoner quarters. And the outdated room layout of the building and unattended cameras Leave blind spots where violence can easily go unnoticed.

For years, county leaders have talked about eliminating the facility—sometimes by replacing it with another prison, sometimes by replacing it with a mental health treatment facility, and sometimes by simply not replacing it at all. After five years of pursuing the last of those options, the Board of Supervisors reversed course this month and began again with the discussion about possible successors.

“The pendulum has swung,” Warden Holly Mitchell said at a board meeting earlier this month. “We keep asking, 'When are you going to close the Men's Central Jail?' I think there has to be a 'And what are we going to build or create for this population that maybe pretrial detention, diversion and community facilities don't fit?'”

The 2006 study was the result of an earlier effort to meet the county's changing prison needs. At the time, however, the plan was to explore the possibility of adding maximum security beds to the existing facility. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works commissioned GKK Works to conduct a feasibility study – and the results revealed a number of serious deficiencies.

One of the biggest problems concerns the concrete construction.

Nonductile concrete buildings – such as the Men's Central Jail – were common in the 1950s and 1960s. Generally, the structures do not have enough steel rebar to prevent concrete from bursting out of the building's columns during an earthquake. This now-famous flaw was discovered after the 1971 Sylmar quake.

The 6.6 magnitude earthquake caused two concrete structures at the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Fernando to collapse, killing 49 people. Concrete stairs and buildings on a hospital campus in Sylmar also collapsed, killing three people.

Later, non-ductile concrete structures were deemed so dangerous that their construction was banned.

But the Men's Central Jail was built long before that, and Wilkerson said the feasibility study “describes the building as having all the classic non-ductile concrete issues that we're concerned about,” including a “lack of overall strength.”

The fact that the Men's Central Jail survived this quake — as well as the later Northridge earthquake of 1994 — does not mean that it will be spared damage in the future. Both earthquakes were centered in the San Fernando Valley, and by the time the tremors reached downtown, they were significantly weaker.

In addition to these specific concerns, the 2006 report also lists a number of other “undesirable structural characteristics” that “would result in significant to severe structural damage in the event of a major seismic disturbance.”

The building's walls and columns are overstressed, meaning they may not be able to support the floors above. The ground floor – which has some windows – is relatively weak compared to the upper floors. And there is a design flaw that has since been identified as being too short: the columns on the second and third floors are too short, posing a significant hazard.

In addition to the problems identified in the study, The Men's Central Jail, like much of the LA Basin, is located in what is called a liquefaction zoneLiquefaction occurs when the shaking of an earthquake effectively turns the land into quicksand. Typically this happens in places where the soil is loose sand or mud and is filled with groundwater – such as near rivers, such as the one a few hundred metres from Men's Central.

Liquefaction can cause structures to tip over or lead to a more dramatic phenomenon known as “lateral spread“, in which buildings slide down gentle slopes on suddenly liquid ground, for example towards a river bank.

The feasibility study does not mention these possibilities. Wilkerson says that's because the study was published before liquefaction zone maps were better understood.

“We now know,” Wilkerson said, “that the downtown river basin has a high water table and very grainy soil. So there is a zone in that downtown region where there is potential for liquefaction.”

When that happens, he explains, buildings can settle “in a very uneven way” – one part may settle 15 centimeters while another part does not settle at all. “It's a kind of seismic hazard,” he adds.

Fixing the problems would be predictably costly and logistically challenging. The study includes a four-page list of proposed earthquake-resistant improvements, such as adding two-foot-thick reinforced concrete shear walls extending from the foundation to the roof, installing retaining jackets around the existing columns, and adding a variety of reinforced concrete beams and flanged retaining walls. Options exist for the prison's infirmary, including adding new steel framing.

To achieve this, the facility would likely have to be partially or completely evacuated for several years, the study says. And while the minimal work needed to achieve a “life-safe” level of earthquake protection began in 2006 at a cost of about $251 million, more extensive changes to both prevent deaths and keep the building habitable in the event of a major earthquake would have cost more than $303 million at the time.

In the meantime, the building continues to shake.

A former prison employee – who wished to remain anonymous due to pending litigation – told the Times she was making her rounds when an earthquake struck sometime around 2019. She described feeling a jolt before the facility was locked down. And while no one was hurt, the incident was a reminder of how old and dilapidated the facility was. She said her “biggest fear” afterward was that the prison's floors would collapse.

A defense attorney, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, described being in prison when the 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck the prison earlier this month.

“There was a loud bang and then the interview booths started shaking very, very violently and it really felt like they were going to collapse at any moment,” the lawyer said.

If that happens, Kendrick, the ACLU attorney, warned that the county could face significant and costly liability claims in court – especially since county leaders were made aware of the problems nearly two decades ago.

“In cases involving prisons and detention centres, the issue is one of deliberate indifference and whether government officials are aware of the significant risk of serious harm to those detained,” she said.

“Something like this is a prime example of a significant risk of serious harm,” Kendrick continued, “and the county's inaction for nearly 20 years is the textbook definition of willful indifference.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.