State Lags in Seismic Testing of Schools

Nearly four years after the Loma Prieta earthquake created a new sense of urgency to upgrade school safety, state officials have barely begun a survey to determine whether older public school buildings, including many damaged in the Northridge quake, should be brought up to more modern seismic standards.

The state also has not inspected California’s 55,000 public school buildings although officials had warned that a majority of them had “a potential for injury to students and teachers and for major property damage . . . if a moderate or greater earthquake occurs in a heavily populated urban area.”

No buildings in the Los Angeles Unified School District collapsed when the 6.6 temblor struck before dawn Jan. 17. But damage is estimated at $500 million to $700 million--much of it in older structures. And officials say non-structural seismic hazards, such as unsecured cabinets, would have injured many students and teachers if the quake had hit during school hours.

“Even though public schools are very good buildings, we need to sift through the good older buildings and find a few that are bad,” said Tom Tobin, executive director of the state Seismic Safety Commission. “Some out there need to be identified and retrofitted” with seismic improvements.

Records show that the eight most seriously damaged Los Angeles schools were built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s--before seismic safety standards were strengthened after the 1971 Sylmar quake.

Four San Fernando Valley schools that have been closed indefinitely also were damaged in the Sylmar quake. The most severely damaged were two Granada Hills campuses--Kennedy High School, which was in the final phase of construction when the Sylmar quake hit, and Van Gogh Elementary, which underwent extensive repairs after the 1971 quake.

Officials at the financially troubled school district questioned whether seismic surveys or costly retrofitting were necessary at the district’s 855 schools and centers.

“It seems to me the buildings have been tested under fire,” said Douglas Brown, director of facilities services.

The Field Act, the school earthquake safety law passed after the Long Beach quake of 1933, “doesn’t guarantee that the building is not going to be damaged,” Brown said. “It guarantees that the building is going to retain its integrity and generally not collapse.”

School board member Julie Korenstein, whose San Fernando Valley district includes portions of Northridge, said: “Under the circumstances--under the worst earthquake in Los Angeles history--our schools fared very well.”

An examination of state and school district records, interviews with seismic safety experts and visits to damaged schools found:

* Thousands of schools in Los Angeles and throughout California were built before 1976, when earthquake safety standards for schools were strengthened.

* Like other districts, LAUSD is required by law to upgrade buildings for seismic safety only during major remodeling or expansions.

* Neither the state architect’s office, which oversees school construction, nor the school district is required to regularly inspect schools for seismic safety hazards.

* Much of the damage from the quake was caused by non-structural hazards such as unsecured cabinets, bookcases and light fixtures, but the school district does not have a state-recommended program to anchor objects that could fall or fly in an earthquake. Officials say they secure light fixtures and objects whenever they make renovations at schools.

Brown acknowledged that jammed doors and falling objects posed a potential hazard. “I think people would have been hurt in this quake, had (schools) been occupied, because of falling equipment . . . ,” he said. “But people could have gotten out or could have been removed from those structures, without significant or perhaps any loss of life, except through trauma.”

Architect Gary McGavin, a member of the Seismic Safety Commission, said some life-threatening hazards could be easily and inexpensively corrected. “We spend all this money on structures and essentially ignore the non-structural things,” he said. “A falling bookcase can kill a kid.”

For six decades, the state has recognized the importance of providing special seismic protection for schools. The codes for new school construction have been more stringent than for most other structures since 1933, when the Field Act was adopted.

In 1959, 1976 and 1988, there were major revisions in earthquake-resistance standards for construction of public elementary and secondary schools, based on new information from damage and collapse observed during earthquakes.

Although legislation passed 25 years ago required older unreinforced masonry buildings to be retrofitted, there is no requirement for schools to be brought up to the latest seismic safety standards unless they undergo major renovation. Nor is there a requirement for schools built before 1976 to tie down movable objects so they cannot fall or fly during an earthquake.

Within a month of Northern California’s Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, then-Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill to provide $2.75 million to the Office of the State Architect for a review of older school buildings.

The bill, sponsored by the state Seismic Safety Commission, required the state architect to complete a survey of schools by Jan. 1, 1992.

“A major earthquake will still cause a significant loss of school functions and property damage and may cause injuries to students and teachers in these older schools,” the commission reported.

The bill passed the Assembly but died in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

During this same period, the state architect’s office was urging then-Gov. George Deukmejian to add $3.5 million to the budget for the first year of a comprehensive seismic review of schools, state colleges and universities, and state offices, according to a budget document submitted two months after Loma Prieta.

Of the 55,000 projects involving elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and community colleges, state officials said 19,500 were constructed from 1933 to 1959, and another 20,500 were built between 1960 and 1976.

Bringing hazardous public schools up to current earthquake standards, officials estimated, could cost $2 billion to $5 billion statewide--more than the $1.5-billion program to retrofit the state’s freeways.

In requesting funds for a survey, the state architect’s office pointed out, “Over half of our public school buildings were designed, constructed or structurally improved between enactment of the Field Act in 1933 and 1959, after which time significant revisions to the building codes were made. . . .

“Building elements designed using early practices and procedures have proven inadequate when subjected to actual earthquake forces.”

The state architect began work on the survey, spending about $85,000 of $174,000 included in the state budget for the project. But work was halted after the Waters bill died.

In an interview last week, State Architect Harry C. Hallenbeck said he has no plans to resume the survey unless the Legislature orders it or his staff members who have examined some quake-damaged Los Angeles schools find problems in older facilities.

“There are priorities,” Hallenbeck said. “Since the Field Act in general is performing pretty well, it’s hard for us to put this to the highest priority. . . .

“Whether this earthquake will demonstrate that the older buildings suffered versus the newer ones, it’s just too early to tell.”

Waters, now a congresswoman, said she still believes the statewide survey is necessary.

“I’ve always had a fear we would experience an earthquake and schoolchildren would be sitting in unsafe buildings,” she said last week. “I thought it was important to do some advance planning and use some resources to ensure the schools’ safety.”

Four of the major earthquakes in Southern California this century--Long Beach in 1933, Sylmar in 1971, Whittier in 1987 and Northridge this year--struck either before or after school hours.

Records show that there are 10,877 buildings in the Los Angeles Unified School District--and that 9,457 were built before 1970, and 424 before 1930. But the heaviest period of construction was the 1950s and 1960s, when 6,161 buildings were erected. Only 1,400 buildings were put up since 1980.

The most seriously damaged schools in the Northridge quake are likely to be closed at least several weeks, according to school officials. And officials said part of Kennedy High School in Granada Hills may need to be demolished.

State inspectors found a three-inch fissure in the earth snaking its way 200 yards from the baseball field through the girls’ locker room, across a concrete patio and through the boys’ locker room.

“This is one of the few sites I’ve seen that have so many deep ground ruptures,” said Jack Starlin, a senior structural engineer with the state architect’s office.

Hardest hit at the school was the three-story administration building, with two floors of classrooms. Large cracks were visible all over the building. Ceiling tiles had come down. Windows broke. And outside, one overhead panel in a concrete arcade had slipped down several inches.

McGavin of the Seismic Safety Commission said the administration building could have collapsed “if the strong shaking had lasted a few seconds longer.”

In the concession office where the school’s 2,300 students can buy confections and T-shirts, everything had fallen off storage and display shelves, including flats of canned soda and cardboard boxes containing yearbooks. A 3,000-pound safe shifted on its concrete platform.

“This room was about this deep in rubble,” school financial manager June Anderson said, indicating chest height.

At Van Gogh Elementary School, which was heavily damaged in the Sylmar quake, much of the recent destruction was similar to that in 1971, said Donald Jepcott, a structural engineer examining schools for the National Science Foundation. But he said some of the damage did not appear as severe this time.

For example, the columns supporting the outdoor eating pavilion for students were displaced more than a foot in 1971, but reinforced columns held up well in this month’s quake.

But school officials said the ground beneath the school is so unstable that the site may need to be abandoned.

The end of a covered walkway between the eating pavilion and the auditorium struck the auditorium wall, creating a large crack at a side entrance. Many other cracks crisscrossed the floors of buildings.

In one classroom, a big crack stretched across the width of the room and, as in all classrooms, books and supplies had fallen out of built-in cabinets against the walls. But nothing had fallen from overhead, said Principal Maureen Diekmann.

At Frost Middle School in Granada Hills, Principal Jay Peterman said: “It looks beautiful from the outside but it got hit pretty hard on the inside.” The school opened in 1969 and is a split level.

Where a wooden column buckled beneath its canopy, an entrance to the building was rendered unusable. Elsewhere, metal screws were pulled from the bottoms of the columns supporting a covered walkway that was raised several inches at one end by the quake.

The most immediate danger to students, had they been in school during the quake, would have been items falling off shelves, from ceilings and out of cabinets, Peterman said. In a storage room for the chemistry labs, bottles of chemicals fell and broke.

The textbook storage room was thigh-deep in books. “If someone had been in there, they would’ve been severely injured,” he said, adding that administrators are considering installation of bars or bungee cords to restrain items on shelves.

Another concern, the principal said, was that heavy air-conditioning units and water heaters mounted above classrooms were thrown around in the quake.

At Danube Avenue Elementary School in Granada Hills, a concrete canopy over an outdoor eating pavilion for students was leaning on metal supports that had tilted about 15 to 20 degrees. A large metal heating vent fell onto desks.

Principal Rosemary Enzer and the plant manager, Joe Perkins, said they knew of no inspections for seismic safety before the quake. Perkins, who as plant manager supervises the school’s custodians, also said he had never received any training in seismic safety.

Underlying the capricious nature of the quake was the strikingly different impact it had on two identical two-story buildings erected in the 1920s at San Fernando Elementary School.

“One we can’t use,” said Assistant Principal Ted Johnson. “It has major structural damage. . . . And the other one, 20 feet to the east of it and its exact twin, has got some plaster cracks. That’s the extent of it.”

In addition, two bungalows--in use at the school for about 30 years--fell off their 18-inch-high wooden foundations and two more partially fell off, but officials said they remained structurally intact.

The building that officials said fared the best was the newest on campus, the cafeteria, built in the late 1970s. It had only minor cosmetic problems.

Outside the San Fernando Valley, one of the most severely damaged campuses was Marvin Avenue Elementary School, just a few hundred yards south of the buckled lanes of the Santa Monica Freeway at Fairfax Avenue.

Two large, two-story classroom buildings are unusable because of structural damage, said Principal Anna McLine. The worst-hit building, which looks out on the freeway, is webbed with cracks.

A number of classrooms, including a computer lab, remain sealed because their doors were jammed shut by the quake. The door to the storage area where administrators had stashed 400 gallons of bottled water for use in emergencies also was jammed shut.

McLine, who said she believes Marvin was built in the early- to mid-1960s, speculated that the school’s location might have played an important part in the damage. She cited the proximity of the crippled freeway and a collapsed parking structure on the grounds of Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center. “They’re all in a straight line,” she said.

Los Angeles school officials said they cannot eliminate a $600-million backlog of deferred maintenance, such as leaky roofs, let alone commission a seismic survey or retrofitting of older school buildings.

“We’ve been in a triage mode, patching the holes year to year . . . ,” said school board member Mark Slavkin.

Public support for increased school funding has been hard to secure, Slavkin said, noting last year’s defeat of a measure to lower the passage requirement for school bonds from a two-thirds to a simple majority.

After the Sylmar quake, the Los Angeles school board sought approval of earthquake safety bonds. The measures were defeated twice. But Los Angeles city voters in 1990 approved a $376-million bond measure for seismic safety improvements to bridges and municipal buildings.

Slavkin, whose west San Fernando Valley district was hard hit by the quake, said: “There is no way that this disaster can be looked at as an indictment of current school safety rules.” But, he added, “every effort should be made to ensure that these facilities are at the highest level of safety and security for kids.”

While the state architect’s office and Los Angeles city school officials say they lack the money to survey older schools, at least one school district--Berkeley--undertook an evaluation of its schools.

Although all of the schools met Field Act requirements, five of the district’s 17 schools were found to be potentially unsafe. One had to be permanently closed, two are closed temporarily while undergoing retrofitting, and two others are scheduled for retrofit work.

Berkeley voters passed a $158-million school bond issue in June, 1992, to pay the tab.

“School buildings built before 1976 should be examined,” said Arrieta Chakos, legislative liaison for Berkeley schools. “For us, the Loma Prieta earthquake was a wake-up call.”

Long-Term Danage

More than 150 public schools in Los Angeles reported earthquake damage earlier this month. Officials were able to open all but 76 of them Tuesday, and they are reopening more as cleanup and repair are completed. Officials said the following schools shown below sustained the most serious damage.

1. El Camino Real High, Woodland Hills

Built: 1970-72

Damage: broken glass and loose ceramic in main entrance, ceiling tiles down all over.

2. Northridge Junior High, Northridge

Built: 1957 and 1960*

Damage: Most buildings unusable, ground water leaking into cafeteria.

3. Ernest Lawrence Junior High, Chatsworth

Built: 1969

Damage: Broken pipes, two main arcades condemned, two bungalows off foundations, structural damage in cafeteria and auditorium.

4. Van Gogh Elementary, Granada Hills

Built: 1968 and 1972

Damage: Structurally unsafe; no gas.

5. Robert Frost Junior High, Granada Hills

Built: 1971

Damage: Light fixtiures, fire sprinkler; gas lines needed testing.

6. John F. Kennedy High School, Granada Hills

Built: 1972

Damage: Major damage to main building.

7. San Fernando Middle School, San Fernando

Built: 1953-76

Damage: Plaster cracks; needs structural review.

8. San Fernando Elementary School, San Fernando

Built: 1935-79

Damage: No water of gas, southwest building closed; 11 classrooms and cafteria unusable.

* Additional parts of school built in 1976 and 1984

Sources: Los Angeles Unified School District inspection reports from Jan. 21 and State Architect’s office.

(BullDog Edition, A28) School Quake Safety

For more than 60 years, California public school buildings have been held to higher earthquake standards than most other structures. A landmark piece of legislation known as the Field Act was enacted after the devastating Long Beach earthquake in 1933. The codes for new schools have been revised a number of times, but the revisions are not retroactive unless schools are undergoing expansion or major renovation.

* 1933: The magnitude 6.3 Long Beach quake hits after school hours, destroying several school buildings and damaging others. One month later, the Field Act becomes law, named for Assemblyman C. Don Field of Glendale.

* 1941: The state architect wins approval for major changes to the schoolhouse construction code, toughening earthquake standards further.

* 1968: For the first time, the Legislature requires upgrading of pre-1933 buildings for earthquake safety. An initial deadline of 1975 for compliance is later extended to 1977.

* 1971: The magnitude 6.5 Sylmar quake causes heavy damage to schools.

* 1976: A major revision of the school building code is adopted, but it applies only to new construction and remodeling projects with no retrofit requirement.

* 1987: The magnitude 5.9 Whittier quake causes additional damage to schools and other structures.

* 1988: The state Building Standards Commission adopts another round of major changes in the school construction code.

* 1989: In July, a state earthquake task force asks that Field Act requirements be extended to non-structural hazards and recommends that schools anchor file cabinets and other large objects. But these and other suggested changes are not required by law.

* 1989: In October, the magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake hits Northern California, causing damage to schools near the epicenter.

* 1989: Within a month of the Loma Prieta quake, then-Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) introduces a bill to survey “early Field Act” school buildings. The state architect asks for $3.5 million to determine whether schools and state-owned buildings should be retrofitted to meet updated earthquake standards.

* 1990: The Legislature approves $174,000--a fraction of what the state architect asked for--to begin a survey of school buildings constructed before the Sylmar quake. Only $85,000 is spent. The Waters bill dies in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

* 1994: The magnitude 6.6 Northridge quake hits, causing major damage to a number of schools, primarily in the San Fernando Valley.