B.C. Lumber Aroused Suspicions In February -- Seattle-Area Dealer Noticed Low Prices

The owner of a major Seattle-area building-products company said yesterday he first became concerned six months ago about lumber being supplied to local builders by a British Columbia wholesaler.

Lumber supplied by B.B.M.

Lakeview Wholesale Lumber Ltd. in Surrey, B.C., just southeast of Vancouver, has been found with stamps certifying the wood as high quality when it actually is an inferior grade, local builders and county inspectors say.

Two years ago, B.B.M. pleaded guilty in a British Columbia court and was fined $100,000 after admitting it had defrauded the public by falsely upgrading inferior wood.

Jack Curran, owner of Henry Bacon Building Material Inc., based in Bellevue, said he wondered earlier this year about the wholesaler's consistently cheaper prices for lumber it was delivering to builders.

``I remember we were in a meeting, and I asked my buyer why we were buying from B.B.M.

instead of going direct to a mill,'' Curran said. ``The buyer said, `Just one reason - they're cheaper.' I remember wondering how a middleman could always be cheaper than a mill.''

In a memorandum to its members made public yesterday, the Seattle Master Builders Association, which represents 1,340 builders and building-material suppliers in King and Snohomish counties, said B.B.M. apparently distributed the mislabeled lumber that ended up in the Seattle area.

A lawyer for the company told reporters in Vancouver yesterday that B.B.M. was not responsible, however.

B.B.M. has received letters from two Surrey mills - Moga Timber Mill Ltd. and A.P. Timber Co. Ltd. - accepting responsibility for grading errors in lumber they supplied to B.B.M., said attorney William Smart.

``The company says that they are the victims and that they did nothing wrong,'' he said.

The Seattle Master Builders letter named the same two companies, saying the misgraded lumber had numbers stamped in it identifying it as being from the two mills.

A Moga official declined to comment. The phone number for A.P. was the same as Moga's, but the person who answered the phone yesterday said no one at A.P. was available to take calls.

On Nov. 6, Moga President Brian Brar sent a letter to building-products suppliers saying it was responsible for the mislabeled lumber:

``This letter is to confirm that any errors in grading of the lumber remanufactured by Moga Timber Mill Ltd. and sold to B.B.M. Lakeview Wholesale Lumber Ltd. is solely our responsibility. . . . We confirm that we will be responsible for any additional costs or claims which arise as a result of this error and the grading of this lumber by us.''

Moga is a lumber remanufacturer, which means it takes inferior-quality lumber and tries to cut out or mitigate defects to improve quality. For example, a remanufacturer may take a piece of wood with defects and cut it into smaller pieces to isolate the defects. In effect, it takes one big piece of bad wood and turns it into several pieces, some of which are bad and some of which are good.

One local lumber supplier, who asked not to be identified, said Moga and A.P. are small companies that don't have the capacity to produce the quantity of mislabeled lumber that is being found in the Seattle area. The supplier said the two companies also don't have the facilities to remanufacturer wood in the lengths that have been found to be mislabeled on local construction projects.

Master Builders said the problem of misgraded lumber came to its attention Nov. 1.

Curran, however, said Henry Bacon had bought lumber from B.B.M. beginning in February. He said the firm had purchased $1.2 million worth of lumber from the B.C. wholesaler this year.

Barb Iverson, a spokeswoman for Master Builders, said B.B.M. is one of the largest lumber suppliers to large apartment complexes in the Seattle area.

Mislabeled wood apparently has found its way into single-family homes as well, although Iverson said most of the lumber was delivered to apartment projects.

In King County, inspection work continued today of more than 60 buildings at 30 construction sites. Pierce County building inspectors said they had found no mislabeled lumber. Officials in Snohomish County said they had discovered it at three construction sites.

Curran said B.B.M.'s wood is typically shipped directly to job sites and never goes through Henry Bacon's lumberyard. He said this may explain why Henry Bacon never discovered the wood it was buying had been altered. Even when the company went to a job site to check the wood, it found nothing wrong, he said.

Curran said company officials looked at bundles of lumber, called slings, in which good lumber was placed on the outside while the low-quality lumber was inside the sling, out of sight.

Curran said a sling typically is four pieces wide and 20 pieces high. ``They were packaged in such a way to disguise the bad lumber,'' he said.

Every piece of lumber used in construction is typically stamped to identify its quality and the type of tree it came from. King County officials and builders who used the mismarked wood say the old stamp was apparently sanded off and a higher grade was stamped on it.

Curran said Henry Bacon removed $120,000 worth of the mislabeled lumber from one job site. In all, he said, the company has identified seven projects for which it supplied lumber that was misgraded.

``This business has been my life for 48 years,'' Curran said. ``I've never had a problem as big as this - but I've sure got a big one now.''

Several sources in the construction industry, including builders and suppliers, said they have a big public-relations problem because of the mislabeled lumber.

``We all have a stake in trying to rebuild consumer confidence,'' said one local lumber broker. ``We need to be open about the problem so people understand this bad wood isn't everywhere.''