Three years after Los Angeles police blew up a South Los Angeles neighborhood by setting off a firework display, the city will pay more than $21 million to settle claims by many residents who were displaced and still live in a hotel.
Community members put up signs before the press conference.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
The City Council unanimously approved agreements with more than a dozen residents on Tuesday, days after the anniversary of the June 30, 2021, explosion. The agreements will now go to Mayor Karen Bass for approval.
The city agreed to pay one resident, Lucia Gonzales, $175,000. Rosalina Reyes will receive $1.07 million, which the family's attorney said is strictly for property damage and does not include personal injuries.
But the largest settlement, to resolve property and personal injury claims by more than a dozen residents of the working-class neighborhood, is for $20 million. Awards range from $100,000 to $2.8 million for the 17 plaintiffs.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price at a council meeting on July 2, 2024, at City Hall.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Councilman Curren Price, in whose district the explosion occurred, said in a statement Tuesday that the process over the past three years “has been excruciatingly slow, and on behalf of the City of Los Angeles, I regret that it has taken so long to get to this point.”
“The victims of the 27th Street fireworks explosion have suffered unimaginable pain and trauma that will last a lifetime,” Price said. “Reaching these financial agreements was a crucial step in their recovery, rebuilding their lives, and finding stability and peace.”
Price amended the motion for the $20 million settlement to also extend stays at the downtown Level hotel through February for affected residents. He also proposed extending services at the All Peoples Community Center, which has been providing assistance and resources to residents since the explosion.
City Comptroller Kenneth Mejia's office estimated that the explosion has cost the city about $10.5 million through February.
In an email, Diana Chang, a spokeswoman for Mejia, said the relocation of displaced residents has cost $5.3 million, plus $2.3 million for liability claims, $1.55 million for cleanup and repair, $1.3 million for the LAPD containment vehicle (to replace the one destroyed in the explosion) and just over $44,000 for city labor, not including the cost of police officers.
“The truth is that this incident should never have happened, it was entirely avoidable and, after all these years, we are still recovering from it,” Price said.
Some homes have plywood covering window and door openings on East 27th Street after the LAPD fireworks explosion.
(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)
Jose Bacerra inside his home in Los Angeles on October 27, 2021. The house was severely damaged by the explosion. He lived there with 10 family members.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
About 42 residents still live at Level in 13 rooms. The agreements would cover many of those residents, according to city officials. But there are still pending claims, including an additional one from the Reyes family.
The city attorney's office did not provide a breakdown of how many claims remain pending.
Once settlement checks are issued, hotel families will have up to 90 days to find alternative housing, according to Price's office.
The agreement “includes provisions that allow individuals adequate time to transition from the hotel,” Price’s office said.
Kenia Quintanilla, who is part of the larger settlement, said her family is planning to buy a house but is waiting until they receive the money to start looking for one.
“We don’t know where we’re going to go… but it doesn’t really matter,” Quintanilla said. “Because I just don’t want to be in the hotel. I’m sick of this.”
On June 30, 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad failed to detonate a cache of fireworks discovered in the backyard of a home on 27th Street. The explosion injured 17 people and severely damaged homes. More than 80 residents were displaced.
The illegal fireworks were found at the home of Arturo Ceja III, who pleaded guilty in federal court to transporting explosives without a license from Nevada to California. He was sentenced to five months in prison and two years of supervised release. Ceja was not fined and will not pay any restitution, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Despite repeated demands from residents who lost their homes in the blast, the names and formal disciplinary actions of the officers involved in the affair had remained largely hidden, owing to the Los Angeles Police Department’s secretive disciplinary system and its refusal to discuss personnel matters. Last year, The Times identified the bomb squad personnel involved.
Among them were Detective Damien Levesque, the on-scene supervisor who repeatedly walked away from critical discussions about the operation’s safety; Mell Hogg, the lead technician who failed to weigh the fireworks powder the team intended to detonate and instead grossly underestimated its explosive power; Mark Richardson, who helped Hogg x-ray samples of the explosives; Brendan McCarty, who warned his fellow technicians and Levesque that the plan was unsafe; Thomas Deluccia, who helped load the commercial fireworks discovered in the home; and Stefanie Alcocer, who was primarily responsible for building a countercharge, the explosive used to detonate the fireworks inside the department’s “total containment vessel,” which failed to explode.
Bomb squads on site believed the containment vessel's maximum capacity was 40 pounds of net explosives, according to the Los Angeles Police Department inspector general's report. But the vessel was actually rated to hold only 33 pounds of explosives.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives later determined that the bomb squad had loaded the boat with 39.8 pounds of explosives. That amount includes the countercharge.
“I strongly expect that the Los Angeles Police Department has learned from this disaster and has taken all necessary steps to prevent tragedies like this from happening again in the future for the good of our city,” Councilmember Price said in his statement.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
