The fireplace has become a source of intense dispute. Bescos maintains that he knew nothing about it until after the fire. He testified that Becker told him in September 2010 that he was not planning to install one. When he did the final inspection in November 2010, he said he did not see a fireplace. He suggested to investigators that it had either been covered over with drywall in an effort to conceal it, or installed after the inspection.
But Becker and his attorney, Donald Ré, hotly dispute this.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Gerhard Becker has been living in his home awaiting trial.
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"This guy lied like crazy," Becker says.
Ré argues that Bescos approved the fireplace at the final inspection, perhaps because he was working too quickly and gave only a cursory overview of the house. After the fire, Ré maintains, Bescos covered himself by lying and claiming that he had never seen the fireplace.
"He's willing to blame Mr. Becker for this and take the blame off himself," Ré argued at the preliminary hearing.
If the building inspector approved the fireplace, Ré argues, then Becker cannot be found grossly negligent for constructing it. Beyond that, Ré contends that the government cannot prosecute someone for conduct it previously condoned.
Becker is not claiming that the fireplace was well built. He says he thought that covering the wood with cement board and tile would make it fireproof.
"I was thinking I could manage the issue covering up everything with noncombustible material," he tells the Weekly.
Though he was wrong, his belief was evidently sincere. Otherwise, he and his girlfriend would not have been asleep in the house when the fire broke out.
But that's as much fault as he will acknowledge. Asked whether it was a mistake to put an outdoor fireplace indoors, he asks: "What makes an outdoor unit an outdoor unit and an indoor unit an indoor unit? I asked that and I didn't get an answer. I would appreciate it if someone would explain."
Glenn Allen was given a hero's funeral. Some 8,000 mourners filed into the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Allen, 61, had joined the department in 1974, following in the footsteps of his father, an LAFD engineer.
For the last 16 years of his life, Allen served at Fire Station 97, on Mulholland Drive near Laurel Canyon. The firefighters there mounted Allen's uniform, his badge and his ax in a shadow box on the wall — a reminder, they say, of the dangers they face.
Allen devoted much of his spare time to Valley Presbyterian Church in North Hills, where he was a deacon and a member of the choir. He left behind his wife and a daughter. The day after he died, his first grandson was born.
His widow, Melanie Allen, declined to be interviewed for this story. (Out of concern for her privacy, his fire department colleagues also declined to speak extensively.) Last August, she filed a lawsuit against Becker, accusing him of "despicable conduct."
The suit alleges a broad range of violations, including that Becker had built a "highly flammable hidden void space" in the ceiling; that he had not installed fire stops; that he had shut off the water supply to the house, hampering firefighting efforts; that he failed to warn the firefighters that they were entering a death trap; and that he committed arson. The claims go well beyond the errors cited by the inspectors and investigators.
In reply, Becker's lawyers asked that the entire case be dismissed under the "Firefighters' Rule." "The undergirding legal principle of the rule is the assumption of the risk," Becker's attorney wrote. "Firefighters, whose occupation by its very nature exposes them to risk of harm, cannot complain of negligence in the creation of the very occasion for their engagement."
Greg Keating, a professor at the USC Gould School of Law, agrees that the Firefighter's Rule will be a difficult hurdle to overcome.
"It's not an easy claim for the plaintiff to win," he says. The idea behind the rule, he says, is "that the firefighter has already been compensated in advance for this risk through very generous disability benefits and health and retirement benefits."
While Becker has been accused of numerous building code violations, several experts said it is not so unusual for architects to circumvent certain rules.
"Some code requirements may seem illogical or useless," says Mehrdad Farivar, an attorney who used to practice as an architect. "People do comply, and then they reverse things [after inspection]. But most architects wouldn't mess around with something that's a life-safety issue."
Brian Stewart, an attorney who represents architects in contract disputes, agrees.
"People do skirt building codes," he says. "Usually it's not on life safety. People are sensitive to that."
While Becker was certainly responsible for building a dangerously defective fireplace, other factors contributed to Allen's death.
A report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found several mistakes the firefighters had made in attacking the fire. The most serious one was that they failed to anticipate that the ceiling could collapse.
At the preliminary hearing, Watters said he had never experienced a ceiling collapse in 14 years as a firefighter. But the NIOSH investigators argued that the firefighters should have been aware that the longer the fire burned uncontrolled in the attic, the more likely a collapse became.
