Earthquake Safe? Schools Look to Find Out

Update: As part of the seismic safety series, California Watch will be holding an for kids at the Milpitas Public Library on Thursday April 14 from 3-4 p.m. with the American Red Cross.

Are California's public school buildings seismically safe? That's the question school districts in the state are struggling to answer, after records from an investigation say they're not necessarily ready for a big earthquake.

A 19-month California Watch investigation released Thursday uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools. 

California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety in 1933 with the Field Act, but data from the Division of the State Architect’s Office shows 20,000 school projects statewide never got final safety certifications. Milpitas schools are not on this list.

However, a separate inventory—one that shows Milpitas schools—found nearly 7,540 seismically risky school buildings in the state. Yet, California Watch reports that only two schools have been able to access a $200 million fund for upgrades. 

The Milpitas construction projects dating back to the '60s appeared on a recently updated list provided by the regulatory agency that oversees plan review and construction of school buildings, the Division of the State Architect.

The is working with its architects to verify the list, according to John Cimino, district director of maintenance operations and transportation.

The state architect's office was directed by the Legislature to compile a general overview of the potential risk of seismically unsafe construction projects on public school campuses back in 1999, according to spokesman Eric Lamoureux.

The inventory of construction projects with questionable seismic safety was not required, but came as a result of the report. Out of about 9,660 buildings, nearly 7,540 were considered category 2s, or vulnerable in an earthquake.

"What we were providing was a quick snapshot of the potential risk," Lamoureux said, but acknowledged room for error. 

The assessments were conducted using documents, he said, not on-site visits. It's possible that the plans never went forward or that the buildings got retrofitted or demolished, he said.

In 2008, the state architects sent the list to school districts and asked them to provide up-to-date information, he said. As a result, some construction projects have been taken off the original list.

When state structural engineers reviewed files for the original list, they narrowed the criteria to schools with concrete slab walls, considered to be riskier than wood-frame walls, said Lamoureux, and not meeting the standards of the 1976 Uniform Building Code.

The Milpitas construction projects on the original list, mostly built in the '60s, are labeled as category 2s. Those buildings are considered likely to receive significant damage in earthquake and experience potential collapse, he said.

However, even during the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge earthquakes, no public schools in California collapsed or even partially collapsed, according to the AB-300 report.

Most of the city of Milpitas is located in a liquefaction zone, where the soil can lose stiffness during an earthquake, leading to infrastructure damage. The liquefaction probability is 5-10 percent in a 7.8-magnitude earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

The research in this article was provided to Patch by California Watch, the state's largest investigative reporting team, part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Read more about  with California Watch. 

Milpitas Patch will continue to report on the AB-300 projects in the Milpitas Unified School District when more information is available.