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Laminated glass protects Los Angeles Times building against rioters

On Wednesday, April 29, 1992 LA Times newspaper building superintendent, Jerry Holden and cadre of loyal employees spent several hours wielding fire extinguishers and fighting off rioters and the fires they had started in the precinct. "The rioters would break a window and then start throwing in Molotov cocktails. They broke all of our ground floor windows and a lot of second floor windows too. But they never got through the windows of a branch of The Bank of America situated in one corner of our building. They wanted to get in there most of all. They spent a lot of time trying but they couldn't get through," said Mr. Holden. "That very night, I called Giroux Glass (a local glazier)," he continued, "and told them I wanted the kind of glass the bank had to replace all the windows in our building." The Bank of America had a laminated glass façade and although the windows had been cracked by the rioters, the laminated glazing absorbed the energy of the attackers' missiles and blows. The glass remained in the frames, preventing entry and the subsequent fire bombing to which the rest of the building had been subjected. The laminated glass façade was cracked but the PVB interface held the windows safely intact, even allowing the bank to open for business the next day.

"The day after the riots, we started putting laminated glass in every window on the ground floor and some thicker, bullet-proof laminated glass in the second floor publisher's offices," continued Mr. Holden. The replacement glass he ordered, according to Mike Franklin of Giroux Glass, is 11 mm heat-treated laminate, set in aluminum frames captured with DuPont Neoprene^® gaskets inside and out. The configuration consists of two 4.7mm lites sandwiching a 0.76 mm PVB interlayer.

During the riots, some vandals inscribed their names, slogans and other graffiti on window glass, leading some window film companies to encourage building managers to apply films as a "sacrificial layer" that could be replaced. However, Mr. Holden decided against the films. "The film and one replacement application probably every two years would cost more than laminated glass. You don't want to spend that kind of money every two years; the film is not cost effective," he stated.

Laminated glass, costing roughly 40% more per square meter than 5.6mm tempered glass, was an easy decision for Mr. Holden. "Add up the cost of the fires we could have had. Add up the costs of cleanup and boarding up. With laminated glass, you avoid all these potential costs," he explained. "What this glass does is buy us time. A total of 2,700 people work in the LA Times building. I'd hate to pay for the cost of lost time and revenue if they couldn't work. We're self-insured. The laminated glass is our insurance. We'll never use anything but laminated glass," he concluded.