Bill on School Seismic Study to Be Widened

Legislation requiring a seismic study of California’s public schools will be broadened to cover all buildings constructed before 1976 and all those of tilt-up construction regardless of their age, state officials said Monday.

The state has estimated that 60% of the 60,000 public school buildings are at least three decades old. A survey for The Times found that four out of five buildings in 98 Southern California and Bay Area districts are that old.

In addition, the survey found at least 395 buildings of tilt-up construction, a type that experts say has fared poorly in earthquakes.

The current version of a bill by Assemblywoman Ellen Corbett (D-Hayward) calls for an examination of tilt-ups and some other potentially hazardous building types. Corbett said Monday she that had decided to broaden her bill after recent conversations with state seismic experts but that The Times survey has heightened awareness of “a very large statewide issue.”

“It really brings home the necessity to do a statewide survey,” she said. “It shows that some districts have been able to do the [seismic] work, but some have not.

“And [the problem] is not just in one place. It’s in hundreds of districts.”

The newspaper reported Sunday that half of the districts that responded to the survey have not examined their pre-1976 buildings, although seismic experts say such structures could be most vulnerable in an earthquake and should be checked.

The survey by UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism students found that at least 1,000 public school buildings in Los Angeles and Orange counties and five Bay Area counties harbor potential seismic hazards that district officials say they have been unable to fix.

“We think this survey should be a wake-up call for lawmakers and the education community,” said Mike Myslinski, spokesman for the California Teachers Assn. “Teachers and students are entitled to work and study in buildings that meet modern earthquake standards.”

Corbett’s bill, AB 300, is being supported by the state Seismic Safety Commission, the Department of Insurance and the Coalition for Adequate School Housing (CASH), representing half of the state’s school districts. The bill, which would provide $500,000 to start a school survey, was approved earlier this month by the Assembly and is now in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Pat Snyder, seismic commission chairwoman, said surveying older schools is particularly important because widespread deferred maintenance might well have weakened their ability to withstand earthquakes. “We used to be proud of our schools but we allowed them to deteriorate,” she said. “Commissioners are worried about what happens behind school walls that we can’t see.”

State Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush supports a survey to protect the state’s school children from harm and to insulate insurance carriers from unnecessarily high losses from earthquake-damaged schools, a spokesman said.

Although a number of local school officials have expressed reservations about the cost of evaluating and fixing older schools, CASH is officially supporting a statewide study. “There may be some problems out there because our buildings are so old,” said Jim Murdoch, the organization’s executive director.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin is not an official sponsor of the bill but wants to expedite its passage, said spokesman Doug Stone. “We believe that it is absolutely necessary that AB 300 will be placed on the governor’s desk,” he said. “And we hope he will support it.”

Gov. Gray Davis probably will not take a position until the bill reaches its final form, said an aide in the governor’s Office of Education.

The bill currently targets nonductile or brittle concrete buildings, buildings with serious dry rot or termite damage and tilt-ups, in which walls are lifted to a vertical position and fastened to the roof.

Districts responding to The Times’ survey reported more than 3,000 buildings with unrepaired roofs, structural dry rot and other maintenance problems that officials say could make structures more susceptible to quake damage. And districts reported more than 750 concrete buildings erected before 1976, the year of the last major revision in school building codes.

“Pre-1976 and tilt-up buildings are those at the greatest risk of failure in an earthquake,” said Corbett. “And these are the facilities that most likely have not been checked recently.”