Health And Safety Violations

Harvey Duro emerged from his office and headed toward Harvey Lane, a road he named after himself. Stopping at a picnic table in the shade, Duro, 60, lit a cigarette and surveyed the sprawling desert shantytown before him. There it stood: row upon row of densely packed trailers, restaurants, a grocery store, a self-service laundry, used-car lots and even a church. A fierce sun beat down on the stark, dun-colored kingdom.

A high-end psychiatric hospital in Pasadena where four patients died and one was raped in recent years is facing renewed scrutiny after inspectors learned of several recent escapes and near suicides. Aurora Las Encinas Hospital has been notified that it risks losing federal financial support after the latest incidents, one of which involved a woman known to be suicidal who was able to remove a battery from a TV remote-control device and swallow it. Several days after that, she broke a mirror and swallowed glass.

A manufacturing company has agreed to pay a $147,900 fine for producing a new chemical without the approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, officials said Wednesday. BP Chemicals Inc., also known as Hitco, manufactured and sold large amounts of the chemical for at least one year, but stopped production after realizing it had failed to notify federal officials, according to the EPA.

If San Luis Obispo County rancher Dan De Vaul was daring the courts to take action against him after a jury convicted him on two counts of illegally housing homeless addicts, he got his response Monday. Superior Court Judge John Trice ordered the 66-year-operator of Sunny Acres, a self-styled rehab program for some of the Central Coast's toughest cases, to serve 90 days in jail. He was also fined $1,000. Trice said he had little choice because De Vaul has repeatedly refused to bring the living arrangements at his ranch up to code despite the offers of county officials to help him. On Monday, he even refused an offer of probation.

Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo announced Monday that he wants the city and county to begin conducting surprise health and safety inspections of public schools, a move that took Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer by surprise. Delgadillo said he felt a moral obligation to send inspectors to campuses to make sure bathrooms are clean, cafeterias are free from vermin and fire escapes are functioning.

The Red Onion restaurant chain, which two years ago paid the steepest civil fines ever levied in Orange County for health and safety code violations, agreed Friday to a new record payment of $380,654 for repetition of most of the old violations at its four restaurants in the county.

In an unprecedented move, the California Youth Authority on Wednesday decertified one of Los Angeles County's three juvenile hall facilities because it was in violation of health and safety regulations. The move against 33-year-old Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey could render the county "highly vulnerable to liability lawsuits," regional CYA Administrator Rito Rosa said.

Even $50,000 is not enough, apparently, to entice Elena Zagustin out of hiding. The former Huntington Harbour resident whose garbage-filled house enraged neighbors and sparked a decade-long court battle disappeared in September after a judge ordered her to serve a 30-day jail term for violating health and safety laws.

"Will it be better for us if we go someplace else?" asked the 14-year-old girl with wide brown eyes, who giggled at the cockroaches scurrying at the doorway of a neighboring apartment. It was a brave question for Norma Garcia, a student at Toll Junior High, who lives with her family of eight and about 100 others--mostly poor Latinos--in a dilapidated apartment complex in an industrial section of Glendale. But it was also a question no one can answer.

Fresno County health officials shut down an illegal farm labor camp south of Fresno after finding numerous health and safety violations, including bare electrical wires, unvented gas appliances and an open sewer. Officials said at least 32 people were displaced by the closure, but all were informed of alternate housing that was available.

Rosa Frias was working the evening shift at Bimbo Bakeries in South San Francisco when she reached into her bread-making machine to remove a hunk of dried dough. She screamed as her left hand, and then her lower arm, were sucked into the gears of the Winkler stringline proofer. That night, the limb had to be amputated above the elbow. The incident drew a $21,750 fine from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. But Bimbo paid nothing. It appealed to the Cal-OSHA Appeals Board, which dismissed the case on a technicality: The inspector had retired and Cal-OSHA could not prove that he had had permission to enter the factory.

Six Southern California hospitals have been fined $25,000 each in administrative penalties for serious violations that, in some cases, led to death or serious injury, according to state Department of Public Health officials. Children's Hospital of Orange County was fined because its nursing staff failed to ensure appropriate drainage after a child's neurological procedure in November, an oversight that led to severe brain injury. Dr. Maria Minon, the hospital's chief medical officer, said the hospital "very much" regrets the incident and has adjusted protocols for patient care, increased staff training and added layers of checks and balances to minimize the chance of it occurring again.

Vowing "never to stop pushing" for condom use in porn, AIDS Healthcare Foundation officials said Wednesday that they plan to file complaints today with state officials against 16 California-based production companies they say have violated workplace safety laws. The complaints will mark the latest move by the Los Angeles-based advocacy group to pressure the porn industry and government regulators to do more to safeguard the health of adult-film performers. The foundation sued Los Angeles County last month alleging that public health officials had failed to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and to enforce laws requiring employers to protect workers against exposure to bodily fluids.

Former employees of Aurora Las Encinas Hospital, a private psychiatric facility in Pasadena, filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against the owner alleging that chronic understaffing has compromised patient care. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of four former employees, says understaffing forced Las Encinas staff to work past the ends of their shifts, with no overtime pay, to complete work obligations.

Portraying law enforcers as lawbreakers, the state toxic substances enforcement agency has found that the Redondo Beach Police Department violated state codes after at least 800 hazardous lead bullet fragments from its outdoor firing range were found in the surrounding neighborhood, including an elementary school across the street. The Department of Toxic Substances Control report, dated Oct.

The death of a temporary employee who was crushed in a stampede of post-Thanksgiving shoppers at a Wal-Mart store could have been prevented, federal officials said Tuesday as they proposed fining the world's largest retailer $7,000 -- as much as it makes in about 18 seconds. The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it was citing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for inadequate crowd management after the Nov. 28 death of Jdimytai Damour at a Long Island store.

UPS Leads Contractors in Penalties: Almost a fifth of federal contract dollars awarded in 1994 went to firms that had been cited for workplace health and safety violations, a General Accounting Office report says. United Parcel Service led the group with 24 penalties, most for failing to improve emergency response to hazards created when packages are damaged. The 261 companies significantly penalized for such violations received contracts totaling $38 billion.

Vowing "never to stop pushing" for condom use in porn, AIDS Healthcare Foundation officials said Wednesday that they plan to file complaints today with state officials against 16 California-based production companies they say have violated workplace safety laws. The complaints will mark the latest move by the Los Angeles-based advocacy group to pressure the porn industry and government regulators to do more to safeguard the health of adult-film performers. The foundation sued Los Angeles County last month alleging that public health officials had failed to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and to enforce laws requiring employers to protect workers against exposure to bodily fluids.

Food safety inspectors say managers of a Central California plant at the center of a salmonella scare knew some of its pistachios were tainted but continued shipping nuts for six more months. The Food and Drug Administration issued a sweeping national warning in March for consumers to avoid eating pistachios after concerns surfaced about nuts from Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc.