Archive for the ‘Hermosa Beach’ Category

A shrine with flowers, votive candles and a photo with the words ‘R.I.P. Alejandro’ overlooks the spot where a worker died in a construction accident. Photo by Robb Fulcher

by Robb Fulcher

Cal-OSHA officials said a contractor should have gotten a state excavation permit for shoring that was being performed when a worker was buried and killed at a large building under construction near South Park. The contractor said he had city permits, and did not know whether Cal-OSHA’s contention about a state permit was correct.

The worker, 29-year-old Alejandro Valladares of Hawthorne, plunged head-first into a hole at the construction site last Wednesday morning, coming to rest with only one of his feet above ground as loose soil collapsed around him. Coworkers tried unsuccessfully to free him, and he quickly perished.

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said Valladares died of suffocation. 

An initial report from Cal-OSHA inspectors contended that a state permit was required for shoring work at the 8,000 square-foot building at Cypress Avenue and Sixth Street, because the hole the worker fell in was more than five feet deep, said spokeswoman Krisann Chasarik. Investigators estimated the hole into which Valladares fell was 15 feet deep.

The contractor, Dave Shaw of Shaw Engineering and Construction, said he did not know whether it was correct that he needed a state permit for the work.

“That I’m not sure about. I know we have permits to do everything we are doing there from the city, and we get inspections on everything we are doing,” he said on Monday. “I’m not sure if that’s a requirement. I don’t know if Cal-OSHA requires that, separate from the city. We had a [city] permit to shore on that job, and that’s what we were doing.”

Hermosa’s acting building director, Bob Rollins, confirmed that city permits had been secured for the project.

Cal-OSHA investigators cited an imminent safety hazard and stopped work at the site, where Shaw is building a field office for his 34-year-old company.

“We were in the middle of the process of shoring, and had holes that were still open,” Shaw said.

He said the holes would be filled and Cal-OSHA would return to inspect that work. Cal-OSHA, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is responsible for investigating workplace accidents.

‘Living hell’

Cal-OSHA and Shaw continued to investigate how the accident happened. 

The initial report from the state investigators stated that Valladares was standing on a piece of plywood placed over the fork attachment of a Caterpillar Bobcat, about six to eight feet above the hole, using a hand-held driver to push a beam down into the earth, Chasarik said.

“Apparently the vibration that he was making caused the plywood to slide off the fork, and he fell headfirst into the hole below him,” she said.

Shaw said the exact nature of the accident was still being investigated. He said he was told that Valladares was not standing on plywood, but instead was standing on a three-foot by 12-foot platform on top of the Bobcat forks. He was told the accident occurred when the forks fell of off the tractor, rather than the platform slipping off the forks.

“I’ve heard several versions,” he said.

“I have not talked to each individual employee…Exactly how it happened, we’re still trying to figure that out,” he said.

Shaw was not at the worksite when the accident occurred, but hurried there from Redondo Beach. 

“Me, my superintendent, everyone on the crew, we’ll all be second guessing ourselves for the rest of our lives. What if we did this, what if we did that? What if I didn’t build the building? It’s been a living hell for all of us,” he said.

“For the life of me I can’t figure out how it happened,” Shaw said.

Shaw said the accident was the only one of that magnitude in the company’s history.

“The only other ones were a couple of back injuries and some stitches,” he said. “I’ve been working in Hermosa and Manhattan since 1976. We’ve done the majority of concrete work there for 34 years.”

Shaw, who maintains company offices at Malaga Cove, said his two-story Hermosa field office, with underground parking, will contain additional company offices and other offices for lease.

The last construction death in Hermosa occurred about six years ago when a worker fell from scaffolding at a partially-built home on the walk street portion of Eighth Street near The Strand.

‘R.I.P. Alejandro’

At a spot overlooking the hole into which Valladares fell, a shrine had been erected with flowers, votive candles and a photo of a handsome, goateed man with the words “R.I.P. Alejandro.”

Shaw described Valladares as “a great guy” who had worked for the company for about nine years, and lived in Hawthorne with a sister, a brother, two nieces and a nephew.

“This is a devastating situation,” Shaw said.

“We’re a big family. We have about 35 employees, two of them from the start in 1976, and others on through all the years. We all know each other and we work together. Definitely this is a family business. Everybody is devastated by this,” Shaw said.

“There’s a lot of support for each other. Every night there is a vigil at his house in Hawthorne,” Shaw said, shortly before leaving to take part in the vigil.

Shaw was helping with arrangements for a burial that will take place in Mexico, where Valladares’ mother lives. Services also were held this week in Hawthorne and Compton.

Sewage spill

The accident occurred about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 10. Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue workers, along with firefighters from all three beach cities and Torrance, and public works employees from all the beach cities, worked for about two and-a-half hours to extricate Valladares’ body.

City officials said a sewage line connecting a nearby duplex to the city’s system came loose, either during the work at the construction site or during the recovery of the body, causing raw sewage to seep onto the site.

City crews waited a number of days for Cal-OSHA to clear them to go onto the site, to repair the sewer line and clean up the mess.

Former City Councilman Bob “Burgie” Benz was critical of the city’s handling of the sewer break, saying officials should have turned off the water to the duplex and moved the occupants into a hotel until the sewer repair could be completed. City officials countered that the spill was confined to the closed-down construction site and did not pose a health threat while they waited to clean it up. ER

by Robb Fulcher

The Hermosa Beach City School Board has moved to ax 10 full-time teaching positions at the beginning of the next school year, unless more money is found to save the positions.

For several years running, the school board has handed formal layoff notices to teachers in the spring, to meet a state-mandated deadline. Then, each year so far, parents and other community members have managed to forestall most of the cuts by raising as much as $1.5 million, covering about 10 percent of the schools’ operating budgets.

The layoff notices approved by the board last week cover seven full-time teachers and numerous part-time positions whose hours are equal to three more full-time positions. The cuts would save about $500,000.

The layoffs were approved by a 4-1 vote with Board President Lisa Claypoole dissenting, who objected most strenuously to the elimination of the technology director’s position.

On the chopping block for next year are seven full-time kindergarten-through-fifth grade teaching positions, one full-time science teaching position, a half-time middle school art teaching position, a half-time middle school technology teaching position, and part-time teaching positions in computer skills, global studies, Spanish, speech, reading, technology and life skills.

Previously, layoff notices for the current school year were mostly withdrawn when more money was found. The school board cut, and later restored, programs including physical education, middle school enrichment classes, a third-through-fifth-grade science lab position, a technology director, and a secretary at Hermosa Valley School.

But educators axed both schools’ music programs, cut the hours of library aides at both schools, and made cuts in a class-size reduction program for early grades. That program, which partially subsidizes some teacher salaries, used to ensure no more than 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade. With the cuts, the number of students per class rises to 25. ER

by Robb Fulcher

An ambitious effort to prepare the community for emergencies will be launched 10 a.m. Saturday at City Hall, and scads of volunteers will hit the streets from there to spread information door-to-door, like modern Paul Reveres, throughout the town.

“The Boy Scouts of America are right. The single most important thing we can do to protect ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and friends in the event of a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, and the tsunamis that devastated Southeast Asia is ‘be prepared,’” stated a letter to city council members about the project.

The Residential Emergency Preparedness Awareness Campaign, coordinated by the Hermosa Beach Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission, aims to get information packets to each household, and also to conduct a brief four-question survey to determine residents’ level of preparedness.

The four questions are:

– Are you signed up for Code Red [the city’s automatic phone notification system]?

– Do you own a pet and is the pet registered? 

– Do you have sufficient food, water and medicine to last you and your family 72 hours?

– Do you know what radio stations to tune into in the event of a disaster?

The information will be used to develop a picture of residential emergency preparedness in the city, organizers said.

The campaign is sponsored by the City of Hermosa Beach, Beach Cities Health District, California Water Service Company, and Consolidated Disposal Service.

The grassroots distribution effort involves volunteers from Hermosa Beach Neighborhood Watch, Leadership Hermosa Class of 2010, Beach Cities Health District, CERT emergency response volunteers, Hermosa Beach council members and commissioners, Kiwanis, middle and high school service clubs, and El Camino College students.

“Collating events” to prepare the information were held by with Hermosa Valley Builders Club members, Key Club and Circle K members from Redondo Union and Mira Costa high schools, and members of Leadership Hermosa Beach.

The Hermosa Beach Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission’s official mission is “to educate and prepare the public to survive, endure, and recover from a natural or manmade disaster.” ER

by Robb Fulcher

Julian Katz, who spearheaded Hermosa’s Bicycle Master Plan, and Todd Dipaola, founder of the South Bay Bicycle Coalition, will be honored by the VOICE organization as 2010 Environmental Heroes.

Katz and Dipaola will be honored at the South Bay’s 18th annual Earth Day Concert and Celebration Saturday, April 17 at Polliwog Park in Manhattan Beach. The presentation will take place on the main stage at noon.

Katz is a Hermosa Beach Public Works commissioner who spearheaded the effort to create a Hermosa Beach Bicycle Master Plan.

“He continues to be vigilant in leading the city to deploy the plan, as evidenced by the ‘sharrows’ on Hermosa Avenue, the first of their kind in the L.A. area,” said Kaye Gagnon Sherbak, president of VOICE (Volunteers and Organizations Improving the Community’s Environment).

The arrow-like ‘sharrows’ were painted on Hermosa Avenue earlier this year to encourage bicyclists to use a full lane going each way, if they need the space for safety.

“Katz also is a founding member of the South Bay Bicycle Coalition, and his work has been an inspiration to us all by demonstrating what is achievable with hard work and dedication,” Sherbak said.

Dipaola is the founder and chair of the South Bay Bicycle Coalition, established last year to provide advocacy and education for “a more bike-able South Bay.”

“We salute Todd and his organization’s effort for advocating carbon footprint-friendly transportation and recreation,” Sherbak said.

For more information see greenervoice.org. ER

Civic development

Councilman Howard Fishman announced the formation of the Hermosa Beach Community Alliance, led in part by prominent businesspeople, that hopes to serve as a liaison between the City Council and residents, civic groups and business community.

The impetus for the group’s formation was “the excessive negative campaigning” in the 2009 City Council election, said organizers in a prepared statement. In the wake of the campaign, members hope to encourage more civil discourse on civic issues.

Examples of negative campaigning that came up in discussions included some letters to the editors of newspapers, and a hired airplane towing a 150-foot long banner over the beach, urging voters to turn out incumbent Michael Keegan, who did not win reelection.

Listed as board members are former councilman George Barks of CVS pharmacy on Pacific Coast Highway, Geoff Hirsch, who worked on Fishman’s election campaign, JAMA Auto House co-owner Andrea Jacobsson, and Sharkeez restaurant co-owner Ron Newman.

“The group’s goal is provide an open forum to discuss these issues and suggest potential policies and programs to City Council in a positive manner, to assist the council in becoming more proactive on issues that impact our community,” the statement read.

“Potential community issues such as attracting and retaining  businesses, expediting new business permits, increased support for local businesses, tourism, public beautification and other topics of interest to residents will be discussed in a town hall-style forum,” it read.

The new group’s monthly meetings are open to the public and all Hermosa civic groups. The first meeting was held earlier this month at City Hall.

Open hearts

The Hermosa Beach Education Foundation will host its signature fundraiser, “Hearts of Hermosa,” 5:45 p.m. to midnight Saturday, March 20 at St. Rocke, 142 Pacific Coast Highway. The theme is Night of Blues. The evening will feature a cocktail hour with New Orleans style appetizers followed by dinner, a silent and live auction, music and dancing.

Tickets ($140 per person) may be purchased online with a credit card at hbef.org, or by mailing checks payable to Hermosa Beach Education Foundation to HBEF, Hearts of Hermosa, P.O. Box 864, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

The 18-year-old, nonprofit Education Foundation helps fund instructional programs in science, technology, foreign language and the arts.

Seeing dots

The Leadership Hermosa Beach class of 2010 hosts a fundraiser 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, March 25 at Blue 32, located at 1332 Hermosa Ave., for the Blue Dots Project to install or replace the dots in the roadways that help firefighters find fire hydrants at night.

Fire Chief David Lantzer called it a “very important project” that would have “remained unfinished for the foreseeable future without the leadership of Leadership Hermosa Beach.” The city, he said, “does not have the resources to accomplish this project on its own, especially the time it takes to survey every fire hydrant in the city to determine whether or not it has a blue dot identifier.”

Blue 32 will donate proceeds from select drinks to the class project, and other businesses will contribute raffle items.

For more see leadershiphermosa.org. ER

Workers prepare to lift a tarp to shield the public's view of the recovery of a body from the site of a construction accident. Photo by Robb Fulcher

by Robb Fulcher

A worker was presumed dead Wednesday morning after he fell into a trench that apparently collapsed around him, burying him in loose dirt, at a large building under construction at Cypress Avenue and Sixth Street, in a mixed commercial-industrial area near South Park.

The man, who was not immediately identified, had been working to install a beam or girder when he plunged head-first into the loose dirt, coming to rest with only one foot above ground, firefighters said.

“His coworkers attempted to rescue him, but the dirt was so compacted they couldn’t pull him up,” Hermosa Beach Fire Capt. Mike Garofano said.

Hermosa firefighters were called to the scene about 10:30 a.m., and called upon Los Angeles County Urban Search and Rescue to recover the man’s body.

Suffocation quickly kills people trapped under tight-packed earth, and the man was presumed dead as rescue workers, county firefighters and Manhattan Beach firefighters began the work of extracting the body from the earth.

Also on hand were officials of the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates workplace accidents.

Two and-a-half hours after the accident firefighters were using a flexible hose about the diameter of a basketball to drive either air or water into the earth to loosen it up so the body could be extracted.

The hose was operated from a “heavy rescue vehicle,” looking like an enormous fire truck, which was backed up to the site of the accident.

Two rescue workers wore harnesses and stood ready to be lowered some 10 to 15 feet below street level to the site of the accident, to free the worker’s body and help hoist it up from where it lay.

The partially completed building is being erected by Shaw Engineering and Construction. Documents at City Hall describe it as a two-story multi-use manufacturing building, and officials said Dave Shaw plans underground parking for trucks and other vehicles, with offices above. ER

by Robb Fulcher

Mayor Michael DiVirgilio used the annual State of the City address as a pep talk, telling civic leaders that innovative Hermosans will find unexpected silver linings in the economy’s dark cloud, and holding out hope for a positive outcome in a $500 million lawsuit that overarches other local issues.

DiVirgilio devoted a front portion of his address Thursday evening at the Beach House hotel to the breach-of-contract lawsuit by the Macpherson Oil Company, which once held a contract to slant-drill under the ocean from city-owned land at Valley Drive and Sixth Street.

“The City Council is totally in the mode of looking under every rock” to create “the best outcome for the community,” DiVirgilio said.

“I still have a positive attitude about how we’re going to come out of this,” he added.

DiVirgilio touched on his personal life to expand upon his optimism regarding the lawsuit. He compared the municipal foreboding associated with the lawsuit to the fear he and his wife Danay felt when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and told of an unsuspected silver lining.

“It was terrifying,” he said her diagnosis. “It was a threat.”

She beat the cancer, and has been free of the disease for four years.

“Our lives are better because of cancer,” DiVirgilio said, sounding a bit surprised himself at the seeming dissonance of the statement.

“We have deep, gut, belly laughs on a daily basis,” he said. “Before, we were serious people.”

He reflected a moment and added that his wife had always had a playful side, and perhaps the experience taught him, more than her, to lighten up.

DiVirgilio said the dark days of the oil drilling litigation are also likely to yield a positive result, although the exact nature of that result cannot be guessed at yet.

“We’re going to look back at this time…and realize our community is better for it,” he said.

DiVirgilio spoke of a recent ruling in the case that is seen as a partial victory for the city, allowing attorneys for Hermosa to present evidence that the planned oil drilling project was unsafe and therefore was properly banned. He said the good news is that the city has been allowed a new line of defense, and the bad news is that the expensive civil trial will continue.

In addition to hefty legal expenses, the 12-year-long lawsuit drains other city resources, he said.

“The city manager spends 25 to 40 percent of his time on Macpherson stuff,” DiVirgilio said. “That’s our senior manager.”

DiVirgilio also predicted that bright, innovative Hermosans would find creative opportunities amid the challenges of a downturned economy, and he praised the civic clubs, leaders, volunteer organizations, athletes, entertainers and businesspeople that have contributed to the town’s vibrancy.

He said an expo for the community’s service clubs could be held before the summer, perhaps at the Clark Stadium area, an idea he first proposed when he took over the mayoral position, which rotates among City Council members.

DiVirgilio spoke of the importance of helping the city schools, which see “costs going up and revenues going down” as parents and other community volunteer raise funds to cover about 10 percent of the academic programs.

He extolled the virtues of green endeavors in Hermosa, such as a 1,000-foot filtration trench being placed under the beach sand near the Strand wall south of the city pier, designed to better filter and evaporate dirty storm water before it reaches the ocean. He said the project will be watched by other communities.

He also pointed to plug-ins for electric cars that will be added to upper Pier Avenue as it is refurbished, in an ongoing project that has already drawn praise from environmental officials.

DiVirgilio offered words of praise to Waterman’s restaurant on the Pier Plaza, saying the establishment remade itself after it ran afoul of City Council members in its previous incarnation as Dragon. ER

by Robb Fulcher

Federal authorities have filed a civil lawsuit accusing Hermosan Sean David Morton, well known for frequent radio-show appearances, of fraudulently raising $6 million after telling investors he could use psychic powers to predict the highs and lows of the stock market.

“Morton’s self-proclaimed psychic powers were nothing more than a scam to attract investors and steal their money,” said George S. Canellos, director of the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed the lawsuit.

Attempts to reach Morton for comment, by email and with a note delivered to the home identified as his by neighbors, were unsuccessful.

SEC officials said Morton used his monthly newsletter, web site, and appearances on a nationally syndicated radio show and at public events to promote his psychic abilities, and made false representations about the abilities to solicit investors for the Delphi Investment Group.

According to the lawsuit, Morton fraudulently raised more than $6 million from more than 100 investors, and at least $240,000 was diverted to a nonprofit religious organization. The lawsuit seeks a return of money and further financial penalties. ER

Event co-chairs invite one and all to the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation’s signature fundraiser, the ‘Hearts of Hermosa’ dinner-dance-auction 5:45 to midnight Saturday, March 20 at St. Rocke, 142 PCH. This year’s event will feature a pre-dinner cocktail hour with New Orleans style appetizers. Auction items range from breakfast at the Firehouse for four kids, plus a ride to school in the fire truck to five nights in Shelly Beach, Australia.

Tickets are $140; see hbef.org or mail checks payable to Hermosa Beach Education Foundation to HBEF, Hearts of Hermosa, P.O. Box 864, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

The all-volunteer, nonprofit foundation helps fund school programs in science, technology, foreign language and the arts.

The 2010 co-chairs are (front) Stephanie Beck, Jenn Auville, Patti Ackerman, Carolyn Petty, (back) Susie Fraley, Laurie Baker, Lili McLean, Gloria Vialpando, Sam Rudow and (not pictured) Jeanine Benjamin and Kathi Jonas. ER

Oil gambit

Attorneys for the city will ask the state Supreme Court to dismiss a $500 million breach-of-contract lawsuit by an oil company that once planned to slant-drill under the Pacific Ocean from city-owned land.

The move comes on the heels of an important ruling by a state appeals court that allowed the city a new line of defense, but stopped short of dismissing the lawsuit as city officials had hoped.

Now they hope the Supreme Court will take the appeals court ruling “one step further,” City Attorney Michael Jenkins said Tuesday, shortly after the City Council authorized attorneys to seek a hearing before the high court.

“We think that this case can and should be dismissed without the necessity of a trial,” Jenkins said.

He said only 5 percent of such requests win a hearing before the Supreme Court. If the city secures a hearing, it would be the second successful long shot in a row – city officials said they had only a 2 percent chance of securing the recent appeals court hearing.

Pound foolish?

The lone faux pas in Mayor Michael DiVirgilio’s State of the City address came as he was showing slides of culturally accomplished Hermosans and their institutions, including the Comedy & Magic Club, the Lighthouse Café and punk rock icons Pennywise.

“I don’t happen to be a big fan of Pennywise,” he said offhand, prompting a roar of laughter from the civic leaders assembled for the annual speech at the Beach House hotel.

Then DiVirgilio began to walk his statement back, as they say.

“That probably came out wrong,” he said quickly, adding, “If I listened to them more I’d probably change my mind.”

St. Paddy’s

The annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, one of Hermosa’s signature events, takes place 11 a.m. Saturday, March 13. Decorated floats, classic cars, scouts and Brownies, pipers and dancers, Little Leaguers, dignitaries and more will start at Pier Avenue and Valley Drive, proceed down Pier to Hermosa Avenue, and turn south to disappear into an emerald mist at Eighth Street.

Green giveaway

Hermosa Beach Friends of the Parks in conjunction with the city’s St. Patrick’s Parade will host its spring family event, “Everything’s Green,” 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 13 at Starfish/Banzai Beach Plaza, 934 Hermosa Ave. The event will feature a children’s “green plant giveaway,” coloring, crafts and popcorn, and a membership drive.

Green vehicle

St. Cross by-the-sea Episcopal Church sponsors Plug-In Hermosa, an electric vehicle expo 9 a.m. to noon Sunday, March 14, at 1808 Monterey Blvd. St. Cross is hosting the event in partnership with Plug In America. Featured will be a gas-free, all-electric truck with a solar panel affixed to its rear.

In addition, a screening of “Who Killed the Electric Car,” followed by a discussion, will be 7 p.m. Thursday, March 18 at the church. Light refreshments will be served beginning 6:30 p.m.

For more call 310-376-8989 or see stcross.org and pluginamerica.com.

New tourney, new home

The AVP has proposed a second pro beach volleyball tournament in Hermosa, adding a round robin event Sept. 17 to 19, which used to be held in Las Vegas. The AVP also holds the Hermosa Beach Open over the summer.

The round robin, in which players rotate from partner to partner, would require a stadium court and two additional courts, making a sand footprint about five times smaller than that of the Hermosa Open. Original plans had called for the event to be held in Las Vegas, but economic conditions made it difficult to secure a venue.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Commission has approved the September tourney, and the City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the request Tuesday, April 27.

The AVP is also planning to move from its inland, high rise offices in the Howard Hughes Center, off the 405 Freeway, to an ocean view office in the 24 Hour Fitness building on Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach. ER