Schools

Will Pacifica's Schools Be Safe In An Earthquake?

Despite recent modernization of many Pacifica school buildings, state records show it's still unclear whether they are up to code.

State data compiled by the non-profit news service California Watch shows that regulators routinely fail to ensure that the state's earthquake safety law is followed at schools, including up to seven in Pacifica.

In some cases, the state has ignored reported building code violations, structural flaws and other safety issues and allowed students and teachers to occupy the buildings, according to a 19-month California Watch investigation.

The investigation, which was released Thursday, uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools. 

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California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety in 1933 with the Field Act, but data taken from the Division of the State Architect’s Office (DSA) shows 20,000 school projects statewide never got final safety certifications. In the crunch to get schools built within the last few decades, state architects have been lax on enforcement, California Watch reported.

For decades after the act’s inception, schools did not open at all without Field Act approval.

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A separate inventory completed nine years ago found 7,500 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.

“This is a crisis,” said Steve Castellanos, the California state architect from 2000 to 2005, in the story by a California Watch reporter following its investigation. “I think there has been a failure in the system.”

According to data from the DSA, there are six construction projects at Pacifica schools that have not yet been certified according to the Field Act’s standards. 

Five of those projects, at , Oddstad Elementary School, the Oceana High School gymnasium, and have not been officially concluded, according to the DSA, while one, at , has. 

This does not mean that the projects do not meet the Field Act’s safety standards, only that the DSA has no documentation that an inspection was done to ensure it.

Additionally, five or six schools in Pacifica are included on what is known as the AB 300 list, an inventory of approximately 4,500 California schools that were deemed by the Department of General Services to be unsafe during an earthquake and in need of further structural evaluation.

Assembly Bill 300 was passed in 1999 requiring the state to compile a seismic safety inventory of California’s K-12 school buildings. If the state deems schools might possibly be unsafe in the event of an earthquake, it will send an AB 300 letter to the school district.

While ending up on the AB 300 list of potentially seismically risky schools can indicate dangerous safety issues, it can also signify a simple lapse in certification paperwork, even if safety upgrades have already been made.

A single school may have several buildings or rooms that have been labeled as unsafe. In Pacifica, Oceana High School has two buildings and two rooms that are on the AB 300 list, while Terra Nova High School has eight rooms and two buildings. has four rooms on the list, has four rooms and Fairmont Elementary (which is no longer in use by the district for schooling) has three units that are unspecified as either buildings or rooms.

There are inaccuracies in the data compiled by the state architect’s office that leads to the uncertainty in the actual number of schools on this list. 

For example, in the state’s data, one “school” listed as unsafe is called Park Pacifica, which does not exist as part of the Pacifica School District any longer. Also, Portola Elementary in San Bruno is counted among Pacifica’s AB 300 schools.

But determining whether or not the earthquake safety issues that would have placed a school on the AB 300 list have been addressed is difficult because of lax reporting requirements at DSA.

When the AB 300 list was finished in 2002, a notification was sent out to all school districts on the list. There wasn’t any follow-up on the issue until 2008 when the DSA requested that districts notify it about whether they had brought in a structural engineer and made the appropriate changes to buildings and classrooms.

According to the 2008 update, Jefferson Union High School District (JUHSD) either had not replied to the DSA’s query or had not had anything inspected or updated at Terra Nova High School or Oceana High School.

But according to JUHSD facilities manager Bob Devine, there was seismic retrofitting done at the two campuses following the passage of AB 300, although he could not place the year of the projects nor their scope during an interview.

“As buildings are being modernized, they’re bringing them up to code,” Devine said. The new construction at Terra Nova High School—the lattice of steel that will be a state-of-the-art theater, football stadium and classrooms—is all up to the most current earthquake code, he said.

According to the DSA’s database of projects conducted at California public schools, there are four projects in which the district was required to hire a structural engineer to conduct an inspection not including the ongoing construction of Terra Nova’s gym and theater. Two of those were at Oceana High School, listed as a “Reconstruction/rehabilitation of entire campus” and “Alteration to 1-Gymnasium Building, 1-Swimming Pool Building” in 1999 and 2008, respectively. Two, at Terra Nova High School are listed as “Alteration to 7-Classroom Buildings” and one without a project description, were in 2009.

None of those projects show that required documents drafted by structural engineers upon inspection of the projects were turned in to the DSA. This does not necessarily mean that the work was not done, only that the DSA, the regulatory body in charge of ensuring that the work was done, does not know if it was.

The (PSD) responded to the DSA office’s 2008 query to notify the agency that the Fairmont Elementary building was no longer in use, Loma Chica had been sold and that Park Pacifica was no longer in use. Ortega and Cabrillo, according to the DSA’s office, had not been inspected or modified.

This is contrary to what Josie Peterson, business officer at the district, said as she held the district’s November 2008 reply to the DSA, however.

“We had a bond measure years and years ago and modernized all of our school sites that are currently being used by students,” she said. “I pulled the AB 300 file. All of the open school sites have been seismically retrofitted, other than Fairmont, is a closed school site; it is on the San Andreas earthquake site.”

DSA project documents confirm the modernization of district buildings, all projects that would require earthquake safety inspection, and some projects were specifically launched in response to “seismic reports,” but there are no signed documents in the DSA’s possession showing that the inspections were actually done. Again, this does not mean they weren’t conducted, only that the DSA does not have any proof they were. 

According to California Watch’s investigation, two schools, and the , lie near (in the case of Linda Mar, practically on) fault lines that run to the south and east of Pacifica, posing increased risk in the case of an earthquake. Neither of these schools is on the AB 300 list or have projects that haven’t met the Field Act’s muster, however, and so are deemed to be safe, according to the state.

Local district officials are well aware of these outstanding earthquake safety issues, even if the specifics have become hazy in the decade or more since the AB 300 list was drafted.

“There are a lot of things,” Devine said. “It would take hours to name every little thing.”

Devine said that inspectors, who came through schools in the wake of the 1999 AB 300 legislation, mainly targeted wood-frame buildings and took issue with the diaphragms of school roofs.

But continuing to modernize school facilities at JUHSD and thus bring them up to contemporary earthquake code is much more difficult now than it was five, or even two, years ago. 

Steve Fuentes, associate superintendent of business for the Jefferson District, said that the bond money from a voter-approved property assessment tax passed in 2006 that the district has relied on for these projects is drying up.

Because property values have not been increasing, and in fact dropped after last year’s assessment, the district cannot sell any new bonds and therefore cannot fund any new construction.

Some local officials are frustrated by the AB 300 list and view it as blunt and inaccurate.

“AB 300 was a blanket without any investigation by the state,” Fuentes said. “All the state of California did was use the data they had on file.” 

Satisfying the standards of the Field Act is also a source of frustration for school districts because it is meant to ensure top-level safety at public buildings, not set actual requirements for earthquake safety. Those are mandated by the state and evolve quickly. Cash-strapped schools just can’t keep up. 

“It’s impossible even for private industry to do that,” Schultz said. “Whenever we do a modernization, we abide by the latest codes, which are even more stringent than building a house in some places but they change frequently.”

Wendy Tukloff, superintendent at the Pacifica School District (PSD), said that all of the schools in her district have undergone modernization in the last 10 years but referred further questions to Keith Wisell, facilities manager at PSD, who has not returned phone calls from Patch pertaining to the matter.

Local district officials are confident that Pacifica’s schools will be safe in the case of an earthquake despite the specter of AB 300 and the Field Act, however.

“Yeah, they’re safe,” Devine said. “I haven’t inspected every single one, but for the most part they should be. They’ve lasted through a lot of earthquakes.”

For a state-wide map showing problematic schools, click here, for schools in San Mateo County, go here and for Pacifica, go here. You can also go directly on the map to Terra Nova High School, Oceana High SchoolIngrid B. Lacy Middle School, Oddstad Elementary School, Cabrillo Elementary, Linda Mar Educational Center

This story was produced using data provided to Patch by California Watch, the state's largest investigative reporting team and part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. 


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