Newfound Damage Shuts School Gym

Hidden damage from the Northridge earthquake has caused school administrators to shut down the gym at Lawrence Middle School and sent federal inspectors scouring the school for other signs of hazardous conditions.

The damage was uncovered last week, after falling acoustic tiles prompted an inspection of the gymnasium. Federal disaster officials, called in because the ceiling appeared to be sagging, discovered that wires and clips connecting the ceiling to its support structure had been damaged by the temblor almost three years ago, in January 1994.

“The moment we realized there was more extensive damage, we advised the principal to close the gym for safety, because we didn’t want to take any chances,” said Julie Crum, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s director of design and inspection.

But the closure--which some parents complain has been shrouded in secrecy--has left the school without any large indoor meeting room; its multipurpose room has been closed for almost three years due to earthquake damage.

Crum said the extent of damage to the gym is not yet clear. “We hope to know in the next week or so how long the repairs will take,” she said. “We know it’s hard for a school when all of its major rooms are out of commission.”

The discovery has shaken some Lawrence parents, who wonder whether other undiscovered earthquake-related hazards are jeopardizing their children’s safety.

“If the gym has a problem and we’re just finding out about it three years later, how do we know there isn’t other damage that hasn’t been found yet?” said Corinne Pincus, whose daughter, Caitlan, is in the sixth grade. “How do we know the school is safe?”

But Crum said that as earthquake repairs proceed, it is inevitable that new problems appear. Damage is still being discovered occasionally at many schools near the earthquake’s epicenter in the northern San Fernando Valley.

“It’s somewhat the nature of earthquake damage,” she said “You can’t always see it until you get in there . . . Oftentimes you’re in construction and you take a floor off and discover the concrete underneath is cracked. Or you’re filling in cracks in the wall and you remove the lockers and discover they [the cracks] extend into the floor.”

Crum said the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Office of Emergency Services maintain a special “hidden-damage team” to deal with such problems.

It is not yet clear, she said, whether the school’s ceiling can be repaired or must be replaced.

In the meantime, physical education classes have been meeting on the school playground or--on rainy days like Monday--in the locker or shower rooms, weight room or classrooms, where students play games or watch videotapes.

On Monday, some boys’ gym classes were treated to a videotape of last month’s championship boxing match between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Other classes played volleyball in the shower room.

And effects of the closure are rippling through the Chatsworth community. Coaches at nearby Mason Recreation Center--a city park which sponsors more than 50 teams in its junior basketball leagues--have been scrambling to find practice sites because many of their teams use Lawrence’s gym.

“The coaches are furious, and many of the community members are irate as well,” said Mason’s Patricia Kent. To try to accomodate all its teams, the park has devoted its sole outdoor basketball court to the children’s practices, angering community residents who complain “that as taxpayers, they should be able to use the outside courts,” Kent said.

Many parents, coaches and neighbors of the park are angry because none of them were notified by school officials that the gym had been closed. Parents said they were not informed when school Principal Scott Schmerelson closed the gym two weeks ago, and some did not learn of the shutdown until Monday night’s meeting of the band booster club.

“A lot of us are absolutely fit to be tied,” said Diana Dixon-Davis, a parent who serves on several of the school’s leadership councils. “The principal did not tell the parents, and did not even take the P.E. teachers aside and say ‘Here are your alternatives for classes in the rain.

“So [last] Thursday the kids were sent out in the rain for P.E.,” she said. “A parent called me furious because her kid came home soaking wet.”

Dixon-Davis said that after the ceiling damage was discovered, federal inspectors came back to the campus last week to inspect the columns supporting the roof over the school’s outdoor eating area and to evaluate other possible hazards.

At nearby Chatsworth High, structural damage was recently detected inside several similar columns by construction teams repairing earthquake cracks. “Once they removed the stucco, they discovered that part of the columns had been shattered,” Los Angeles Unified’s Crum explained.

“They had to stop and shore it up and redesign that work.”

The new inspections and repairs will prolong the recovery process at Lawrence. The school was hard hit by the earthquake, which damaged its multipurpose room, library, cafeteria and walkways. Repairs have been completed on all but the multipurpose room.

“I wish they’d just close the entire school and do a thorough inspection,” said Pincus. “I’d rather have my kids miss a couple of days and make it up in the summer than for the principal to say, ‘Let’s just not tell anybody and hope it’s nothing serious.’ ”

Dixon-Davis agrees. “We should have been informed,” she said. “We’re not going to get hysterical and pull our kids out of the school. When it comes to earthquake repairs, we’re used to hearing bad news out here.”