04/07/05

LC050407

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

What can be learned from setting fire to an old school? It
could be a matter of life and death.

Pat Askren>> One of the major problems with structure fires is
firefighters falling through the roofs and, of course, when they
fall into the burn, it's not very good on the firefighters.
Sometimes it's a fatality.

Val>> And then, treasure hunting, toxic waste and deadly
disease. Our FilmWeek critics deliver the prognosis for
"Sahara".

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> How many firefighters' lives could have been saved on
September 11 if they had known when the building was about to
collapse? That's the question that one professor is asking
because burning buildings send out signals. But the question
is, can we detect them and detect them in time? As Kevin Smith
tells us, the answers can only be found in fire itself.

Kevin Smith>> It's an abandoned school building in the small
town of Fillmore in Ventura County, but it has one more lesson
to teach, one that could save lives.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> These engineering students are the ones coming
here to learn on this day. They are from Harvey Mudd College,
one of the Claremont colleges. Their mission? To gather
crucial information as the old high school building burns to the
ground.

Ziyad Duron>> This is one of the original sensors that we
developed early in the project. The sensor is actually that
little bulge you see out there. The rest of this blanketing is
simply to protect it from the heat.

Kevin Smith>> Engineering Professor, Ziyad Duron, known as "Z",
is the guiding force behind the project. His aim is to help
firefighters get out of a burning building in time. The key?
These sensors that measure vibrations. Rapid changes in
vibrations can mean a part of the building is about to collapse.

Ziyad Duron>> What this technology we hope ultimately does for
the firefighter is that it helps the incident commander outside
the fire who's controlling how the resources are allocated. It
would help him in understanding where to place his personnel in
the safest possible manner. So if we tell him, or if the
sensors tell him, that the northeast corner of the building is
weakening, he should be able to see that.

Kevin Smith>> Duron began working on fire safety seven years
ago. His first hint came from firefighters' own experiences.

Ziyad Duron>> If you talk to firefighters, they'll tell you
that when they're inside a burning building, they can hear
creaking and moaning and they interpret all of those noises to
be signs of weakening. So my original thought was that, if they
can hear that, I should be able to measure it.

Kevin Smith>> But he was wrong. There were too many sounds
from too many sources. Then Duron noticed that the fires
created strong vibrations and he began measuring those instead.
Shortly after Duron's initial tests came the attacks of
September 11, 2001. Hundreds of firefighters and rescue
personnel died as the towers collapsed. Suddenly Duron's
project took on new urgency and he received a big infusion of
federal funding. Professor, I guess this overhang will play a
big part in the proceedings today. Tell us what significance
this has.

Ziyad Duron>> This overhang actually hinges along this side
right here. You can see the vents right here. This is where
the hinge will develop and this entire overhang will just close
like a door and just collapse up against the wall. When that
happens, we consider that to be a major collapse event and the
idea for us will be to see if our sensors could have seen or
actually do they see this collapse emerging before anything even
moves visually.

Kevin Smith>> Weighted trash cans were placed on the roof so
those areas would also collapse during the fire.

Ziyad Duron>> What we try to do is try to simulate the presence
of heating and air conditioning units that might be placed on
the roof. Also we try to simulate the weight of a typical
firefighter who may weigh with all his or her gear about two
hundred twenty pounds. So that is a potential collapse event.
The question is, when the building burns, can you detect the
weakening in this area from any of the sensors on the buildings?

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> On this day, the Fillmore Fire Department was
conducting a training exercise on a second abandoned school
building right next to Professor Duron's test site. Fire Chief
Pat Askren has seen the danger his firefighters face.

Pat Askren>> Not knowing when there's going to be a collapse of
roof. Some of the new roofs, trying to judge when they're going
to come in on you, is very difficult. One of the major problems
with structure fires is firefighters falling through the roofs
and, of course, when they fall into the burn, it's not very good
on the firefighter. Sometimes it's a fatality.

Kevin Smith>> So how do firefighters decide when to get out of
a burning building?

Pat Askren>> We do it now by time. You know, we can only have
a certain amount of time in there and we start hearing noises
and stuff. Then we back out of the fire.

Kevin Smith>> The reason for putting sensors to monitor
vibrations on the building behind me is to protect the
firefighters when they get into real life situations like this.
The idea is to identify in advance which parts of the building
might collapse first so the firefighters can protect themselves
and others more quickly.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> About four in the afternoon after two days of
preparation and the end of the training session, it was time to
ignite the old school building.

>> "Okay, guys, that's it. Come out."

Kevin Smith>> It went up like a tinderbox.

>> "Sensor six died. The one on the fire side."

Kevin Smith>> The students watched as the data from the sensors
came in, observing changes in vibrations from the fire, and what
about the overhang that Professor Duron said would and should
collapse? It came down just as predicted.

Eric Flynn>> "The overhang collapsed. You can see here this
huge spike of the data."

Kevin Smith>> A computer program tracked the building as it
weakened. Senior Eric Flynn helped develop the program.

Eric Flynn>> As this line goes down, it means the building is
becoming more unhealthy. It's not as stable as it was
originally, so you can start to see this downward trend about
five minutes before the collapse and it reached the point before
it finally collapses. That's the event right there, the base of
that one.

Kevin Smith>> The sensors also picked up changing vibrations
just before the weighted trash cans fell through the roof.

Ziyad Duron>> But if I'm telling you, hey, Chief, it looks like
the back end of that is moving a lot more than the front end
here, you may want to think about moving some guys out of there.

Kevin Smith>> For Professor Duron, the day's test was an
unqualified success.

Ziyad Duron>> When we started this, we had hoped to get
multiple collapses in the structure and, in fact, that's what
happened. We actually got the loads that we put on the north
end of the building to collapse at a certain time. We got the
loads on the south side to collapse at a different time.

Kevin Smith>> This was the thirteenth burning building
monitored by Professor Duron and his team. In a year or so, the
system will be ready for testing by a fire department. But
first, Duron must develop smaller, cheaper and wireless sensors
that firefighters could carry on their belts and attach quickly
to burning buildings.

Ziyad Duron>> It would almost be like kind of a heart rate
monitor, if you will, on the patient which is the building
helping the firefighters better understand how things are
changing.

Eric Flynn>> We wouldn't give them something as complex as
this. We'd give them much more simple like a red light, orange
light, green light kind of thing that kind of tells them how
healthy the building is.

Kevin Smith>> These firefighters were excited about the new
technology.

Pat Askren>> We're steep in tradition. You know, it's hard for
us to get into things new, but every time we can get some kind
of a tool like this that might save a life, we're all in favor,
especially if we can afford it. You know, an early warning
system or whatever you want to call something like that would be
a marvelous tool for us to have.

Kevin Smith>> And that could be a dream come true for
firefighters in place of the nightmare they often face now. I'm
Kevin Smith for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> It's often said that, when too many people are in charge,
no one's in charge. Take, for example, Los Angeles County.
It's run by five supervisors. Would we be better off if we had
a county mayor? A chief? A top dog? A czar? One supervisor
says yes. Vicki Curry talked to Zev Yaroslavsky about why he
thinks a county chief executive would be a good idea.

Vicki Curry>> Zev Yaroslavsky, you are on the Los Angeles
County Board of Supervisors and you're proposing the creation of
a new office, a county executive. What would that office be?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> It would be an elected executive. It would
be an elected county mayor, if you will, a county executive to
replace the current appointed county administrative officer. It
would not be an added cost to the county, but it would put in
the hands of the people the selection of the person who is
responsible to all of the people of the county for the
administration of county government.

This is the biggest local government outside of New York City,
an eighteen billion dollar a year organization with almost
ninety thousand employees, and it has no head. It has a five-
headed head and there is no organization of any size, certainly
not this size, in America or in the world today that runs the
way we run with a five-member committee.

Vicki Curry>> You have proposed creating this office in the
past and those attempts have been unsuccessful. What's
different today?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> Well, I only proposed it once and it never
got to the ballot. It's been on the ballot before I was a
supervisor, maybe fifteen years ago or a little less, and it
narrowly failed. I think what's changed is -- I think there's
been brought into clear and unmistakable relief the Martin
Luther King Hospital situation, but it's not the only situation
where the lack of one person in charge, the lack of one
executive who's accountable to the people, may have contributed
to a prolonged tolerance of incompetence.

Vicki Curry>> Well, was it the situation at Martin Luther King
Hospital that prompted you to bring this up again?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> Well, it certainly is one of the primary
reasons that I've been thinking about this for many months.
Everybody around here at the hall of administration knows that
this is a problem. Our county administrative officer -- and
I've had a number of conversations with him -- I think would
tell you that what you need is an elected county executive.
Most of the counties in the eastern United States and many in
the midwest of the United States have elected county executives.

Let me put it to you this way. The State Constitution
structures local county government the same way whether you're
Mono County where cows outnumber people a hundred to one or
whether you're Los Angeles County with ten million people. It's
the same structure, five supervisors. We have five very
different people. We have five different points of view. We
have five different world views. We have three Democrats and
two Republicans. We have people who immigrated here from Texas
in the midwest and people who were born and raised here. So to
develop a consensus among the five of us, which is usually what
is striven for, is difficult.

Vicki Curry>> Well, as you point out, Los Angeles is the
largest county in the country. I know there have been concerns
in the past that a county executive would have too much power.
He'd be one of the most powerful people in the country. What
are your thoughts about that?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> He wouldn't be a dictator. There would be a
board of supervisors and there would be a check and balance,
which is kind of our system of government. You'd have a chief
executive elected by the people and you'd have a board of
supervisors who would perform the legislative function. It just
does not make sense to merge -- talk about too much power -- to
vest both the legislative and executive power in one body, the
board of supervisors, for a county this size. It's
unprecedented. That's too much power.

Vicki Curry>> So you're saying you need to reduce your own
power?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> Yeah, I do think that's what it is and I
think that's why it's never gotten on the ballot, at least not
in the last thirteen years. You know, a lot of people say why
would you do that? Why would you reduce your own power? Leave
well enough alone. You've got a good thing going. Yeah, if you
have a good thing going, if you look at it kind of myopically
and day to day and don't see the big picture. But the big
picture is that, when you have a system that is structurally
flawed and ours is, then you have problems like MLK, Martin
Luther King-Drew Hospital. So there's a lot more riding on this
than just whether I have a good thing going or anybody else.

Vicki Curry>> Well, now are you interested in this executive
position?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> No (laughter).

Vicki Curry>> You sure about that (laughter)?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> Don't worry about that. By the time this
thing gets going -- no, this is not for me. This is a long-term
structural change. I'll be very satisfied if I can succeed in
getting this charter change adopted by the people and let the
next generation or future generations be the beneficiaries of it
and be the practitioners of it.

Vicki Curry>> So the big picture question, though, is, given
all the problems in Los Angeles County and how huge it is, would
this even really help? Would it really make a difference?

Zev Yaroslavsky>> Oh, of course, it would make a difference.
Structure matters. The way you govern matters. Somebody has
got to be around to make a decision. We had a hundred-year
flood this year. It took us a week and a half until the next
Board of Supervisors meeting to declare a county-wide disaster.
There was never any doubt that we would declare that disaster,
but it would have been helpful if we could have declared it the
first day and not waited a week and a half, and it goes on and
on.

You know, if somebody on the board -- I don't want to burden you
with all of our internal dirty linen -- but if somebody on the
board is not ready to deal with an issue on a given Tuesday, it
gets put over for a week or two or three and everybody is going
to defer to that person. Maybe they haven't had a chance to
read the report. Maybe they're not ready to vote on it. Maybe
the politics don't add up. So it gets deferred for two to four
weeks or longer, sometimes for months, sometimes for years.

That's no way to run an organization when you have decisions to
make. There is no doubt in my mind that putting one person in
charge who is elected by all of the people and who is
accountable to all of the people and who sees the big picture
and is not parochial in the way they look at things is far
superior to the system we have now.

Vicki Curry>> Well, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, thank you so
much for taking the time to speak with us.

Zev Yaroslavsky>> My pleasure. Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Los Angeles, California 90027

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contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is the
action adventure movie "Sahara" adapted from Clive Custler's
fiction. The movie stars Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn and
Penelope Cruz.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Peter Rainer,
former President of the National Society of Film Critics, and
Andy Klein of CityBeat and ValleyBeat. Well, Andy, let's start
with "Sahara". Your thoughts on it?

Andy Klein>> "Sahara" wants to be essentially the fourth
Indiana Jones film. That's what it's patterned as. It would be
Indiana Jones and the Confederate Doubloons" would be a kind of
title for this. Matthew McConaughey plays this Marine salvage
guy who believes that this Civil War ship that disappeared one
hundred fifty years ago is buried in the sand in Africa. This
is hugely implausible, but the film makes fun of its
implausibility.

When he's searching for this, together with his sidekick, Steve
Zahn, he runs into Penelope Cruz playing a doctor with the World
Health Organization who's trying to find the source of a plague
that's about to get out of control. They both run into, you
know, political problems and military problems and all this
stuff. It really is just stuff. You could rearrange the scenes
in this film eighteen different ways and have it be at least as
effective. There are great special effects. It's obvious that
a lot of money was lavished on this, but the pacing is really,
really off.

Larry Mantle>> Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Yeah, it is sort of Indiana Jones crossed with
James Bond. It's Indiana Bond. They're trying to sort of cram
everything into this movie and make it seem as if it's never
been done before, but of course, it has been many, many times.
So the big problem I had with this movie is that, even though
it's sort of reasonably acceptable entertainment in a kind of
serial afternoon kind of way, there's nothing terribly special
about it. There is a remarkable lack of digitized effects for a
film of this kind, though, which I sort of appreciated and some
of the Sahara-scapes and African vistas are pretty stunning. So
it's mildly entertaining, but the problem is that there's no
sparkle.

Larry Mantle>> Next up is the romantic comedy "Fever Pitch".
It's directed by the Farrelly Brothers, though they didn't write
the script, and it stars Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Peter Rainer, what did you think of "Fever
Pitch"?

Peter Rainer>> Well, "Fever Pitch" is a Farrelly Brothers
movie, so you automatically think that something really, you
know, slimy and sick is going to be going on in this film, but
it doesn't really work out that way. It's a mildly enjoyable
romantic comedy. I pretty much enjoyed it. Jimmy Fallon plays
a character who's a died in the wool Boston Red Sox fan and he
falls in love with Drew Barrymore who plays a kind of
entrepreneurial whiz who is a workaholic.

But they fall in love and everything is going great until
baseball season kicks in and then it turns out that there's a
reason why this guy hasn't married in his early thirties and
everyone is wondering why. It's because he's so obsessed with
the Red Sox that he can't possibly sustain a relationship with
anyone who isn't equally as obsessive as he is or willing to put
up with all of his obsessiveness. That's the gist of the comedy.

It has its nice moments between and they have a lot of nice
chemistry. The main drawback to the movie, I think, is that it
doesn't really go far enough for my taste in the Farrelly
direction, you know. There's something a little sweet and low
about it and I think it could have been sharper and funnier and,
for a point, nastier.

Larry Mantle>> Andy?

Andy Klein>> Actually, I'm so relieved that it didn't go in
that Farrelly direction. I'm not a huge fan of these guys and I
walked into this film with a very low expectation because I also
have in my mind Jimmy Fallon's last performance in "Taxi" which
was practically unwatchable which, you know, drove people out of
the theatre. He actually redeemed himself, I think, here. He's
basically being the younger, thinner Mike Myers. I mean, that's
what he always reminds me of. Drew Barrymore, I actually found
convincing as a business woman, which surprised me.

Peter Rainer>> Well, she really is one. She produced the movie
(laughter).

Andy Klein>> (Laughter) But that doesn't mean she can play it
onscreen. But frankly, I walked in with such a low expectation
that I was pleasantly surprised, though I think I didn't like it
quite as much as Pete.

Larry Mantle>> Our third film this week is "Kung Fu Hustle".
It stars Hong Kong star, Stephen Chow.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Kung Fu Hustle", Andy Klein?

Andy Klein>> Yeah, this is the latest film from Stephen Chow
and I can hear you all asking who is Stephen Chow? He is
probably the biggest star in Hong Kong. About ten years ago, he
actually started out-grossing Jackie Chan, which was really
something. The reason he's not as big a star otherwise is that
his films never were really popular outside of Hong Kong itself
which is a very small market. He plays a sort of bully and a
con man who tries to get some money by convincing people in a
tenement in Hong Kong that he's a representative of the
notorious Axe Gang. He's faking it and, unfortunately, the Axe
Gang finds out and they come there and raise all kinds of
trouble.

The film becomes a series of over-the-top fight sequences that
are very, very funny and a lot of broad humor that's reminiscent
at times even of Roadrunner cartoons. You have things happening
that are totally outside of the realm of physical possibility.
I think it's a really fun movie. It's very, very goofy.

Larry Mantle>> And our final film this week is the family
drama, "Winter Solstice". It stars Anthony LaPaglia and Allison
Janney.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Winter Solstice", Peter Rainer?

Peter Rainer>> This is a very lethargic, very taking very
seriously itself movie about a dysfunctional family. Anthony
LaPaglia plays a father whose wife died about five years before
in a car accident and he's raising these two unruly sons. He's
a landscape gardener in New Jersey and the sons, played by Aaron
Stanford and Michael Webber, are in their own ways pretty
distraught. The way in which it works is that everything is so
carefully calibrated that you can kind of see where it's all
going. You know, all of the great emotional moments are
parceled out in these intense domestic scenes. I didn't really
believe much of it.

Allison Janney comes in at a certain point as a woman who's
house-sitting for a friend for the season and she's really quite
terrific in it. But the way it's paced, it lets you know that
there's something momentous going on which is, in a way, a kind
of condescending to the audience. I don't think anyone will
accuse the director of this film of having A.D.D.

Larry Mantle>> Well, thanks for joining us for another edition
of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC
joined this week by critics Andy Klein of CityBeat and
ValleyBeat, and Peter Rainer, former President of the National
Society of Film Critics. Please join us again next week at this
time for another edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val>> And remember you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek every
Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC 89.3. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Everyone has them and we pass them around without a second
thought, but there's good reason to think twice about germs.

>> I don't want everybody to become Howard Hughes, but on the
other hand, if you touch things and, yes, before you touch
yourself and do things to yourself, washing your hands is very
important.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.