First Interstate Bank Building

Janitors and night staff in the First Interstate Bank Building, now the AON Center, have reported unexplained noises and lights switching on and off by themselves on the eleventh and thirty-second floors. On the night of 4 May 1988, fire broke out on the twelfth floor of the sixty-two-storey tower, then the tallest in Los Angeles, and burned through floors twelve to sixteen before 383 firefighters brought it under control after three hours and thirty-nine minutes. Forty people were injured and one man died: a maintenance worker whose elevator opened onto the burning twelfth floor. Restoration cost an estimated $400 million, and because the sprinkler system was only partly installed, the blaze became a turning point in the push to retrofit sprinklers into existing high-rises.