Damaged School to Be Demolished : Education: Study finds ground beneath Van Gogh Elementary is unstable. Cost of rebuilding is estimated at $5 million.

Earthquake-ravaged Van Gogh Elementary School in Granada Hills will be demolished, although it will take up to three years and about $5 million to rebuild, school district officials told parents and the school’s staff late Wednesday.

After months of study, two consulting firms hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District concluded that the ground beneath the campus is too unstable to support the existing buildings during another strong earthquake.

Van Gogh, the only public school still closed because of damage by the Jan. 17 Northridge quake, is holding classes for its 350 students in a section of nearby Frost Middle School. When the earthquake tore hundreds of crisscrossing fissures through the school and playground, district officials closed the campus until geological studies could be completed.

The school district will apply for a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for the demolition and the construction of a new school, said Doug Brown, director of facilities for the district.

In its final report, the Studio City firm of Jerry Kovacs and Associates Inc. said that another strong earthquake would probably cause more ground fissuring and structural damage, such as occurred at Van Gogh on Jan. 17 and in the 1971 Sylmar quake. The firm recommended that the buildings be replaced with new structures on stronger foundations that could sustain violent soil vibrations.

The Los Angeles firm of Law, Crandall Inc. concluded that the current buildings could be salvaged, but only by substantially strengthening their foundations.

After reviewing the reports, Brown said, the district decided the best option would be to start over.

“With all the kinds of things we would have to do, there wasn’t much choice left,” Brown said before the meeting. “It would cost the same to knock it down and rebuild.”

Many parents who feared the site would be abandoned were relieved that it will continue as a neighborhood school.

The fissures that the Northridge earthquake opened in the playground as well as cracks running through the main hallway were similar to those caused by the 1971 Sylmar quake, suggesting to engineers that the soil underneath the school buildings may have briefly liquefied in the quake.

Liquefaction occurs in areas of loosely packed, fine-grain soil saturated by ground water in an earthquake. Buildings on the site twist and crack as the soil’s load-bearing strength weakens.

Kovacs concluded that the damage at Van Gogh was caused by a combination of liquefaction, seismically induced settlement and a process called translation, in which the soil shifts location during liquefaction. But Law Crandall said that liquefaction was not a major element in the destruction, blaming strong ground movement instead.

The Kovacs report concludes: “It is the opinion of this firm that the damage to the school site and grounds observed after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake has occurred at other times in the past and will occur in the future in response to a sufficient level of ground shaking.”

To counteract the shaking, Brown said, the new buildings would be designed of heavy-duty wood to the strictest seismic standards, grouped in modules of four classrooms each and supported by foundations designed to bridge shaky ground. Brown assured parents there are no plans to abandon the site.

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Van Gogh Principal Maureen Diekmann said there have been no problems related to the site since the students were moved to Frost Middle School. Initial parent concerns that the middle school students would mingle with the elementary school students, she said, proved to be unfounded.

Even before hearing the conclusions of the studies, Diekmann said, parents and the school’s staff were prepared to stay at Frost for at least the next school year. A handful of students transferred to other schools in the district because of the move after the quake, Diekmann said, but more than 60 others applied to enter it under the new school choice program to begin school there in the fall.