As New Schools Are Put Up, Quake Retrofits Are Put Off

The Los Angeles Unified School District has retrofitted just nine of the 145 school buildings that safety experts determined are at risk of collapse during a major earthquake.

The buildings include classrooms, auditoriums and administrative offices on more than 60 campuses across the city, including Taft, Grant, Cleveland, Kennedy and Jefferson high schools as well as numerous elementary and middle schools.

L.A. Unified’s record underscores the struggles of school districts across California to fix buildings that are vulnerable to quakes, a job that could cost as much as $5 billion statewide.

Although voters have approved many bond measures to pay for school construction, much of that money has gone to ease overcrowding by building new campuses. Many school districts say they simply don’t have the money to perform seismic upgrades without asking the voters to pay for it or without help from state government.

“It would be an extreme sacrifice for any school system to pay for such expensive projects without direct support from the state,” said Alan Trudell, spokesman for the Garden Grove Unified School District, where officials are just beginning the process of inspecting its buildings for earthquake problems.

Throughout California, about 7,500 school buildings on 4,244 campuses are of a construction type that is likely to “not perform as well in future earthquakes” as sturdier structures, according to a state survey.

The schools believed to be most vulnerable are those made of rigid concrete, which tends to crack during a quake because it is too stiff to vibrate with the ground’s motion. Some auditoriums and gyms were built in such a way that the roof vibrates at a different frequency than the walls, which could cause the roof to separate and collapse. After several schools were severely damaged during the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, building codes were updated to forbid such construction, but older schools are still at risk, officials said.

More than a dozen schools in Southern California suffered major damage during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which occurred at 4:31 a.m. when the buildings were empty.

Simply having seismic engineers perform full inspections of all the vulnerable buildings would cost $125 million statewide.

L.A. Unified and other school districts are just beginning to study how to improve seismic safety in the vulnerable buildings -- and many educators acknowledge that they still don’t know exactly which buildings pose the greatest risk and how many they will ultimately have to retrofit.

Part of the problem is that the state study designed to provide a census of all vulnerable school buildings turned out to be riddled with errors, making it all but unusable to local school districts.

In recent weeks, L.A. Unified completed a study of its buildings and came up with the 145 structures that are at the greatest risk of damage from a quake.

It’s too early to determine the cost of retrofitting Los Angeles’ schools, but officials estimate the price at $75 per square foot.

The 145 buildings do not include six schools that are located directly on or very near earthquake faults. The district has already set aside $100 million from its most recent construction bond to retrofit those schools: University High School in West Los Angeles; Harding Elementary and Osceola Elementary in Sylmar; San Pascual Elementary in Los Angeles; Brockton Elementary in West Los Angeles; and Luther Burbank Middle School in Eagle Rock.

L.A. Unified deputy chief executive Bruce Kendall, who is in charge of maintaining the district’s facilities, said that once the seismic studies are completed, the district would have to seek money from the state and federal government to pay for the work or ask voters to approve yet another construction bond issue.

School board member David Tokofsky said a bond might ultimately be the only viable alternative, adding that the first step is for the district to determine how much construction is needed and how much it would cost.

“The price tag could be very little, or it could be beyond our wildest imagination,” Tokofsky said.

“I certainly don’t want to see a picture of what you see in Turkey after a major earthquake be the situation of Los Angeles -- particularly where our kids are.”

California has been grappling with the best way to protect students since the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. That temblor flattened many schools, and officials said loss of life would have been significant had the quake occurred during school hours rather than about 6 p.m. After the quake, the state enacted the Field Act, which required that schools be built at higher quake standards than other buildings.

But successive quakes have exposed new weakness and unsafe building techniques, prompting officials to tighten requirements.

After the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in the Bay Area and the Northridge quake, which destroyed some highway bridges, state officials spent $400 million retrofitting the vast majority of Caltrans’ freeway overpasses and underpasses.

But school repairs have lagged behind.

After years of debate, the state Legislature in 1998 ordered the first comprehensive study of the earthquake risk to schools. But a Times review of the list found that it was filled with errors, including school buildings that don’t exist.

Like L.A. Unified, the Santa Ana Unified School District is just beginning the process. The district has hired structural engineers to examine 25 school buildings on the state’s initial list of structures that are at risk of damage from a major temblor. Construction manager Jerry Hills said the district would need financial assistance to perform the work that he expects engineers to recommend on the remaining structures.

Some smaller districts have made bigger strides in repairing or replacing vulnerable schools.

In Los Gatos, for example, older schools were replaced in a modernization program. In Beverly Hills, construction is underway on the last of the district’s seven vulnerable school buildings.

And in Glendale, officials rattled by the Northridge earthquake have spent $30 million to upgrade a dozen campuses. Steve Hodgson, the district’s chief business and financial officer, said his district floated a school bond in 1997 aimed particularly at raising money for seismic work. In addition, the district was able to access state funds for districts that can prove they have a financial hardship.

But those districts are small compared with behemoths like L.A. Unified, where the cost of upgrading could run into the hundreds of millions.

“We’re such a large school district and we have so many buildings, we have to be more methodical,” said Richard Luke, director of design for L.A. Unified.

The nine buildings that the district has retrofitted were all damaged in the Northridge quake, which left several campuses in the San Fernando Valley in disrepair.

Although school districts have been pressing the state for assistance in retrofitting, aid is looking less likely. They tried to have $400 million of the governor’s state infrastructure bond proposal earmarked for school seismic work. But the proposal got mired in the Legislature, and now the entire bond idea is up in the air.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) has proposed legislation that would have the state provide matching funds for school districts to perform earthquake repairs at the 1,200 buildings whose location -- within 2 kilometers of an active fault -- makes them the most vulnerable. The state estimates that retrofitting all of the buildings would cost $800 million.

Hancock says the schools and the state must look beyond simply building more classrooms.

“We have overcrowded classrooms and we have dangerous classrooms,” she said.

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Schools at risk

There are 145 buildings in the Los Angeles Unified School District that officials said are at greatest risk of damage from a major earthquake. Nine have been retrofitted. Here is a sample of the campuses with buildings that have not been retrofitted:

* Kennedy High

* Jefferson High

* Grant High

* Hamilton High

* Mulholland Middle

* Marina del Rey Middle

* Olive Vista Middle

* Burroughs Middle

* Lomita Elementary

* West Athens Elementary

* Sunrise Elementary

* Harrison Elementary

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For a detailed list of the buildings, go to latimes.com/retrofit