Quake Risk a Big Unknown for State’s Public Schools

At least one thousand public school buildings in California’s most populous and earthquake-prone regions harbor potential seismic hazards that district officials say they have been unable to fix.

And 11,000 other buildings in Southern California and Bay Area districts surveyed for The Times have not been examined for seismic safety since being built.

Four out of five of these unexamined buildings are decades old, the survey found. And many were constructed with outdated designs that experts say could present serious safety hazards from partial or total collapse in a major earthquake.

For 20 years, especially after the Loma Prieta and Northridge quakes, state officials have pushed for a seismic study of schools. Although the state has embarked on programs to improve the structural safety of hospitals, universities and state office buildings, repeated efforts to do the same for public schools have failed, usually for budgetary reasons. A statewide study is expected to cost millions of dollars, repairs billions.

“We are [taking care of] grown students but we are neglecting children who can’t help themselves in an earthquake,” said Vilas Mujumdar, operations chief for the Division of the State Architect. “If [parents] knew that their children are going to some of the schools that might not be performing well during a seismic event, I’m sure they would jump up and down to get [legislators] to do something about it.”

This month the Assembly passed a bill requiring a study to identify “the most vulnerable school buildings.” And it may come up for a Senate vote in coming weeks.

What emerged from the survey for The Times, state records and interviews is a strikingly uneven degree of earthquake protection for California’s public school students. As building codes have evolved over six decades, the seismic safety of thousands of older buildings has been frozen in time.

To better understand the condition of schools, reporters from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism mailed questionnaires to all 201 districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties and five Bay Area counties. Responses from 98, representing nearly a third of the state’s 5.8 million public school students, revealed that potential seismic problems plague districts big and small, rich and poor, urban and suburban.

The survey results, covering more than 15,000 buildings, showed:

* One in four districts that responded have voluntarily evaluated all or nearly all of their buildings for earthquake resistance, but most, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, have not.

* Half of the districts have not examined their pre-1976 buildings, which experts say could be most vulnerable in an earthquake and should be checked.

* Only seven of 30 districts that say they have retrofitting needs have been able to make all or nearly all of the repairs.

* More than 3,000 school buildings have structural dry rot, unrepaired roofs and other maintenance problems that state officials say could make buildings more susceptible to serious earthquake damage.

* Although 90% of the districts that responded have launched programs to reduce nonstructural hazards such as falling light fixtures, half have not completed the work.

Some Question Need for Survey

Nonetheless, the vast majority of local school officials said they believe their buildings will hold up moderately or extremely well in an earthquake.

“We weathered the [1987] Whittier earthquake, which was a 6.0,” said Chit Bao, maintenance director of ABC Unified School District, based in Cerritos. “The buildings withstood it without damage. . . . Anything past that is God’s will.”

Experts say, however, that past performance does not guarantee the future safety of buildings. Some structures can be weakened by earlier temblors. And each earthquake presents new challenges.

“It’s almost like saying you had a tornado that didn’t damage your property,” said state geologist Jim Davis. “But we all know . . . that there are different size tornadoes. The same holds true for earthquakes.”

Some districts question the need for a statewide study, fearing that repair costs would be prohibitive, especially because many are already grappling with deferred maintenance. District officials also contend that schools are safe because they were built under the Field Act, enacted after several schools collapsed during the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.

The law sets higher standards for public schools than for commercial and residential buildings. Over the years, construction codes for schools have been updated to reflect improved technology and understanding of earthquakes. However, the state has not required older schools to meet the latest standards.

“Many [school administrators] hold the popular but incorrect idea that Field Act schools are safe by definition,” the state Office of Emergency Services warned six years ago. That still holds true.

After major quakes, the debate over seismic safety in schools intensifies, but then quickly fades. The issue, rooted in dollars, lives and engineering opinions, is as enormous as the state’s school system itself, which has 60,000 buildings in almost 1,000 districts.

Schools sit on everything from bedrock to landfill, and many are near faults.

Designs vary widely. In the San Gabriel Valley community of Arcadia, one elementary school was built of concrete in 1926. A junior high was constructed decades later with brick facing. And the high school has a state-of-the-art, steel-framed classroom building.

Evaluating public schools is an undertaking that some, such as former state architect Harry Hallenbeck, consider excessive. “There are a lot of engineers and architects looking after their schools,” said Hallenbeck. “There is a built-in awareness of the condition of school buildings.”

Various state reports point to the Field Act’s success, noting that no schools have collapsed and no children have died since the law was adopted. But officials also say schools have experienced a lucky streak: Since the 8.3 San Francisco earthquake in 1906, not one urban quake has been of great magnitude or duration. And none has occurred during class time.

After the predawn 1994 Northridge earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.7, more than 100 schools in 45 Southern California districts were red-tagged as unsafe or yellow-tagged for limited entry, a state report said. One private engineer estimated there could have been 45 critical injuries or deaths because of falling nonstructural objects.

“If the timing had been different, there almost certainly would have been injuries, including some chance of severe or deadly ones,” the Seismic Safety Commission, a panel of 17 state-appointed experts, reported to the governor.

“The overall good performance of public schools does not belie the fact that a relatively small number of older Field Act school buildings still pose a life-threatening risk to students,” the commission said.

A backup report for the commission went further. It cited an Office of Emergency Services estimate that 25,000 buildings around the state that are at least three decades old may be in need of strengthening.

No one really knows how many older school buildings are hazardous. “There exist today an unquantified number that are at risk of full or partial collapse” during a major quake, according to a paper written last fall by the state architect division’s Mujumdar and seismic commission member Gary McGavin, an architect who specializes in schools.

At a recent convention in Sacramento, dozens of school facilities directors heard Mujumdar and McGavin stress the need to examine older buildings. “A lot of things we thought were safe aren’t safe anymore,” said Mujumdar.

The following construction types, state and private experts say, are of particular concern:

* Tilt-up buildings, in which concrete walls are tipped upright and fastened to the roof, have fared poorly in major quakes since the 1971 Sylmar quake. No school buildings have collapsed, but some commercial buildings have.

* Inflexible or nonductile concrete frames--sometimes found in buildings constructed before 1976--also have collapsed. Three hospital structures with nonductile concrete fell in the Sylmar quake, killing 50 people.

* Wood frame buildings that have structural deterioration or lack the load-carrying capacity of proper shear walls are more prone to failure, too. Weak shear walls contributed to the collapse of the Northridge Meadows apartments five years ago, which killed 16 people.

School officials answering the Times survey identified more than 350 tilt-ups, 750 concrete buildings erected before 1976, and 850 wood buildings that may not have adequate shear walls. A dozen districts, including Los Angeles, could not provide the same breakdowns.

More Studies of Dangers Are Sought

Twenty districts said at least 130 of these buildings have been fixed. Forty-two other districts said they have not retrofitted these types of buildings, but it is unclear whether they needed work. And 36 districts did not provide information.

Seismic safety can be determined only by a thorough, professional assessment, state officials say. Yet for two decades they have unsuccessfully sought funding to examine older schools.

In 1979, the seismic commission urged an evaluation “in light of new scientific knowledge.” But no action was taken until the Bay Area’s Loma Prieta quake in 1989. Although schools suffered minimal damage, then-Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) sought $2.75 million to examine public schools and community colleges, but her bill died.

In the early 1990s, the state architect’s office tried to identify potentially dangerous schools, but dropped the effort for lack of funds.

For years, the seismic commission has pushed for an evaluation of older schools, but to no avail. It estimated a study would cost $3 million to $5 million and repairs could run $2 billion to $5 billion.

State architect Fred Hummel said a study is necessary because some buildings were constructed to older standards and could have been modified without his agency’s approval. “Some buildings could have gone through a lot of changes that could affect their structural response in an earthquake,” he said.

A current state bill seeks $500,000 to start identifying potentially vulnerable buildings, including those of tilt-up and nonductile construction and buildings with irregular configurations or with serious termite or dry rot damage. “Our goal is to dramatically reduce the collapse risk of public schools, but you can’t eliminate it entirely,” said Fred Turner, staff structural engineer with the seismic commission, one of the bill sponsors.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin favors a study “as long as it can be done in a cost-effective manner,” a spokesman said.

Although not required by law, a quarter of the school districts surveyed--including Culver City and Huntington Beach--say they have seismically evaluated all or nearly all buildings. But some of the biggest districts have not.

After the Northridge quake, the Los Angeles Unified School District examined and repaired damaged buildings. Now the entire district is undergoing $2.4 billion in maintenance improvements and modernization authorized by a 1997 bond measure.

However, officials say most of the district’s 6,078 structures are not being seismically evaluated and retrofitted to current standards, though all but 372 were built before 1976. “It’s not part of our normal routine because the district has been expanding, expanding, expanding,” said John Treadaway, a supervising L.A. Unified engineer and former chief structural engineer. “And we really haven’t had time to do anything else, especially a seismic evaluation.”

At Long Beach Polytechnic High School, ceiling tiles were missing where rainwater had poured into the hallways. But thanks to nearly $500 million in state and local modernization funds, the Art Deco complex and the rest of the district will receive long-overdue upgrades.

Before a school bond issue was put on the ballot, however, a consultant identified potential seismic problems in several steel-framed and older wood-framed buildings. And now the firm has recommended a more extensive seismic study, according to Derek Mau, a structural engineer with Parsons Infrastructure and Technology.

Spokesman Richard Van Der Laan said the district will not fully evaluate its schools but will address any seismic problems encountered during modernization.

Though experts consider pre-1976 buildings the most vulnerable, 47 other districts surveyed have not checked them either.

“Without funding [for repairs], I think it would be a waste of time, a waste of money,” said Paul Manley, maintenance director of the Bay Area’s Newark Unified, which has mostly 1960s-vintage concrete block buildings.

Some districts have tried to obtain funds for seismic studies, only to find the public doesn’t always consider them a high priority.

Torrance High School, with its stately brick facade, has a high profile because it gets used for movie shoots. But, like Torrance Unified’s 32 other campuses, it was built before 1976 and has not been seismically evaluated.

A $42.5-million school improvement bond issue was passed in November. But unlike an earlier measure that failed, it did not include $4 million for a structural assessment.

Without money to hire a structural engineer, the district is counting on the state architect’s office. “We’re not going to dab too much into seismic retrofitting unless someone identifies the structural flaws,” said maintenance director Phillip Fielding.

Districts Vary in Seismic Upgrading

But state officials said they do not have the legal authority to alert districts about potential seismic problems in older school buildings unless they are being modernized.

Based on studies or the age of their buildings, 23 districts concluded that more than 1,000 buildings need retrofitting but could not be fixed. Two-thirds of these districts cited a lack of funds.

Another seven districts, including Brea-Olinda in Orange County and Albany in Alameda County, said they completed all or nearly all their repairs.

During air-conditioning work several years ago, ABC Unified--serving Cerritos, Artesia and Hawaiian Gardens--uncovered problems such as structural dry rot and fixed them.

Although he has faith in his buildings, facilities director Bao recognizes there could be other lurking problems and that technology has improved. And now, he says, he believes nearly all the district’s 257 permanent buildings--many single-story and flat-roofed--could need retrofitting.

In Orange County, Newport-Mesa Unified encompasses schools where most children receive subsidized lunches and campuses where many kids drive their own cars. During roof repairs last year, the district found problems, including a cracked concrete pillar and one building without a shear wall. Officials concluded that “nearly all” of the district’s approximately 240 buildings may need retrofitting.

Both districts say they tackle seismic problems as they encounter them during routine maintenance and repairs, but they cannot afford a comprehensive evaluation.

Fremont Unified, which straddles the Hayward fault in Alameda County, did commission a preliminary study of its 288 buildings two years ago. It found three-quarters of its campuses needed a “detailed investigation for collapse hazards,” and many buildings were at high or moderate risk. But the district has been unable to win voter approval to spend $25 million for retrofitting.

“The need for seismic upgrades was not well understood by the public,” said facilities director Therese Gain.

The last major revision of public school construction standards occurred in 1973, with implementation three years later. But districts generally have the choice of whether to bring their buildings up to current standards.

State officials say Berkeley has been particularly aggressive in confronting seismic problems. Within weeks of Loma Prieta, parents began pressing Berkeley Unified to dig into its reserves to pay for a comprehensive seismic evaluation.

The study found half of the district’s buildings were unsafe. A $158-million bond issue passed easily in 1992, and now Berkeley is retrofitting. “The reason that most districts don’t analyze their buildings is that if they find they have a problem, they’ve put themselves in a liability bind,” said Lewis Jones, facilities director in Berkeley.

Most districts fully retrofit only when the state mandates it. Under the Field Act, buildings that undergo renovations exceeding half the value of the structure must be seismically upgraded.

In Martinez, tucked in the hills of Contra Costa County, this requirement led to the upgrading of all 60 schools. “If it’s mandated, things happen,” said facilities coordinator Rusty Myers. “If it’s not, then it goes on the bottom of the list of 999 other emergencies.”

Sixty districts reported the types of maintenance problems that state officials say could reduce seismic resistance of buildings.

Long Beach school officials estimated that 80% of their 400 buildings need roof repairs or replacements. And Newark officials said half of their 84 buildings have unrepaired structural dry rot.

Long-standing maintenance difficulties statewide are expected to be addressed only partly by the $2.1 billion in modernization funds under Proposition 1A, the $9.2-billion measure passed last year.

Buildings in the San Gabriel Valley’s Garvey Elementary School District have been air-conditioned, but some are more than a half-century old.

“I know the termites are eating us crazy, and that has to be affecting our shear walls,” said Art Reynolds, facilities director for the Rosemead-based district. “Designs are naturally compromised by age.”

In the Northridge quake, most of the $300 million in damage sustained by Los Angeles schools was nonstructural, state officials said. For example, light fixtures crashed onto desks and floors in roughly 100 classrooms.

Nearly five years later, with federal aid, the vast majority of districts surveyed have launched programs to correct such hazards, but half have not finished. The state has previously advised districts on ways to mitigate nonstructural hazards.

Four out of five officials surveyed consider it very or somewhat likely that a major quake will hit their schools within several years. And more than 90% said they believe their schools will stand up extremely or moderately well.

Some, however, said their schools, no matter how well built, could not withstand the strongest earthquakes. “If you have a big enough one, there’s nothing that can help,” said Ron Smith, maintenance director of the Mountain House Elementary School District in Byron, which consists of a single, pre-1900 school building.

Many school officials, particularly those in smaller districts, said they were unfamiliar with state reports outlining the potential risks of some nonductile concrete and tilt-up construction.

“We’re professional educators, not engineers, and we don’t know anything about buildings,” said Denis Campbell, school facilities director in the East Bay town of Emeryville.

But Garvey facilities director Reynolds, an architect, said it recently dawned on him that the Field Act doesn’t protect buildings as they age. “A light went off,” he said. “There’s absolutely no follow-up year after year. It’s a sleeping whatever--bigger than a giant.”

*

Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus and Assistant Director Jill Richardson contributed to this article.

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About This Article

Students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism examined the seismic safety of public schools. They reviewed thousands of pages of state documents and interviewed dozens of school officials, lawmakers and experts in construction and seismic safety as part of a yearlong investigative reporting course taught by Times State Projects Editor Tim Reiterman. They prepared a questionnaire in consultation with government and private experts, then sent it in January to all 201 districts in Los Angeles, Orange and five Bay Area counties. Ninety-eight--or 49%--of the districts responded to the mailed survey or follow-up phone calls by mid-May, and half of those responses came from Los Angeles and Orange counties. Here are the response rates for districts by county: Los Angeles 43%, Orange 52%, Alameda 67%, Contra Costa 39%, Santa Clara 55%, San Mateo 48% and San Francisco 100%. A computer analysis by Vicki McClure yielded findings for this article.

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Designs Targeted by State

Buildings with tilt-up construction, inflexible concrete frames and wooden frames without proper shear walls have performed poorly in earthquakes. State experts say some schools of these types may need retrofitting.

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Public Schools Survey

Most Southern California and Bay Area schools surveyed for The Times have not conducted seismic studies of all their buildings. Of those districts that believe they have structural problems, the majority have not been able to fix them. While almost all districts have embarked on programs to correct nonstructural hazards such as improperly secured ceiling fixtures, most have not completed the work.

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Quake Safety in Schools

This map shows the relative degree of earthquake hazards in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Compared to most areas of the country, the entire region is considered hazardous by state experts. But the risk is greater in some areas because of poorer soil conditions and proximity to faults prone to larger and more frequent earthquakes. The general locations of faults are shown. The map does not include underground blind thrust faults such as the recently discovered Elysian Park fault near downtown Los Angeles, but such faults are factored into the hazard assessments. The hazards at schools (indicated by small dots) depend not only on these geological and seismic conditions but also on the strength of the buildings.

Where The School Districts Stand