Even for Houdini, There's No Escape

If the magicians could wave their wands and make the problem disappear, the broadcasters would shout out the good news.

Too bad things are not that simple at the famous intersection of Sunset and Vine.

That's where a fire in an underground power chamber spewed smoke into a Washington Mutual Savings and Loan branch, coating its money vaults, tellers' counters and customer areas with toxic PCBs.

But the most far-reaching damage was in the bank's basement, which houses the Society of American Magicians' Hall of Fame and Magic Museum and the separate Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters Museum.

Toxic materials have contaminated exhibits and equipment that had been used by illusionists such as Harry Blackstone Sr. and Harry Houdini and collected over the last century by the magicians' group.

In the museum, PCBs cover early radio sets, thousands of original broadcast scripts and transcriptions, and vintage equipment such as Bing Crosby's personal microphone.

Since the Dec. 13, 2004, transformer fire, the two museums have been closed and sealed off along with the bank. Washington Mutual officials say that the branch's cleanup cannot begin until the museums remove their displays.

Museum operators, however, said they cannot move their property until it has been decontaminated. And they said that neither group can afford the about half a million dollars that the cleanup and relocation would cost each organization.

"We have thousands of transcriptions and tapes of old radio shows and old radios and technical equipment dating back to the 1920s. We have examples of the first TVs, thousands of old scripts, a huge collection of antique microphones, including Bing Crosby's personal mike -- the one he felt made him sound so good," said Martin Halperin, a vice president of the 500-member broadcasters group.

"These are one-of-a-kind things. They're irreplaceable. We have broadcasters oral histories, the entire KFI scrapbook that traces that station back to its start. We have the original SigAlert radio. We've duplicated a complete working studio down there, with turntables and equipment. We have the very first audiotape machine -- the Ampex 200, serial number 1."

Halperin is a retired broadcast and sound engineer who lives in Woodland Hills. He said he had jokingly asked the magicians to conjure up a solution to the contamination.

"I said, 'John, can't you pull a rabbit out of the hat and make this go away?' " Halperin said.