State failing to enforce seismic rules for schools EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

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State regulators have routinely failed to enforce California's landmark earthquake safety law for public schools, allowing children and teachers to occupy buildings with structural flaws and potential safety hazards reported during construction.

Top management with the Division of the State Architect, the chief regulator of construction standards for public schools, for years did nothing about 1,100 building projects that its own supervisors had red-flagged for safety defects. The problems were logged and then filed away without follow-up from the state.

At least 20,000 projects - including nearly 5,000 in the Bay Area - were completed without receiving a final safety certification required by law. The projects ranged from fire-alarm upgrades to construction of new classrooms. Statewide, about six of every 10 public schools have at least one uncertified project, a California Watch analysis shows.

California law requires the state architect's office to enforce the Field Act - seismic regulations for schools that were enacted nearly 80 years ago. The law is considered a gold standard of construction, and it requires oversight from state regulators to ensure professional engineering and quality control from the early design phase to the first day of classes.

The Field Act grants these regulators "the police power of the state" over the construction of public schools.

Bureaucratic chaos

But during the last two decades, enforcement of the Field Act has been plagued with bureaucratic chaos, a California Watch investigation has found. Tens of thousands of children attend schools without the required Field Act certification.

Documents show uncertified schools with missing wall anchors, dangerous lights poised above children, poor welding, slipshod emergency exits for disabled students and malfunctioning fire alarms. These problems were reported by district school inspectors and state field supervisors and then lost in a swamp of paperwork.

In many cases, the state does not know whether school officials have fixed these problems. Instead, the state architect's office issued warning letters to school board members and administrators, and walked away.

"This is a crisis," said Steve Castellanos, the California state architect from 2000 to 2005, acknowledging the office he once ran needs an overhaul. "I think there has been a failure in the system."

In 2006, the state architect's office found inadequate testing of construction materials, an increase in unapproved and unqualified inspections of school sites, and buildings that were "completed with other dangerous construction flaws," according to internal task force reports and e-mails.

The state cannot ensure the safety of students and teachers in every school without examining thousands of building projects. It would require contacting scores of architects and contractors, visiting school sites, and reviewing reams of documents from projects that are years and even decades old.

Evading the law

Officials at the state architect's office say school districts have evaded the Field Act, citing sloppy record keeping among local school administrators and poor communication with state regulators.

"We've definitely seen a lack of documentation," said Howard "Chip" Smith, who became acting head of the state architect's office in August. "We've seen inconsistencies in some of the submitted documentation. But we haven't actually seen a case where a significant, imminent hazard or risk was posed by one of these projects."

The Field Act became law following the devastating Long Beach earthquake in 1933, which destroyed or severely damaged 230 school buildings near the epicenter. Officials speculated that thousands of children could have died if the quake had occurred during school hours.

The central mission of the Division of the State Architect is to enforce the Field Act and its distinct inspection process. The office must review the design and engineering plans for school construction and renovation projects to make sure the buildings can withstand the ground-shaking forces of an earthquake.

For example, if a contractor is funneling concrete over a series of welds on a support column, an inspector hired by the school district must witness the work and verify that the strength of the welds and concrete meets Field Act standards. A field engineer from the state architect's office is required to oversee these inspectors.

But in cases reviewed by California Watch, the state architect's office often did little or nothing about safety problems identified during inspections or visits by its own field engineers.

Obvious hazard

A year after renovations were made to the San Martin/Gwinn School in Santa Clara County, a field engineer from the state architect's office found seven large holes on the east side of the building and walls that were built too thin.

An unsecured brick chimney towered over a classroom. A minor earthquake could cause the chimney to collapse and crash through the building, field engineer Robert Potter wrote in a letter to the school district. He described the chimney as "an obvious seismic hazard."

"Although the modernization plans for the (building) were approved by this office, the reviewer and checker apparently missed the above possible seismic deficiencies," Potter wrote in 1999. There is no evidence that the school district hired an inspector to oversee the project or that the construction work was monitored, as required by law.

Despite Potter's warning, the district used the classroom as a kindergarten and day care center for nearly a decade.

In 2007, the state architect's office finally sent the Morgan Hill Unified School District a letter denying Field Act certification - but nothing more. The building now is used for storage. The unreinforced masonry chimney remains attached to the building.

Duplicating codes

Critics believe the Field Act duplicates local building codes. Legislators have even tried unsuccessfully to abolish it, calling the law onerous and complicated. Some builders say the law creates too much unnecessary paperwork and costly delays as they wait for action from the state architect's office.

But seismic experts say the law provides an important system of accountability and is one reason no child has died in an earthquake-damaged school in California since the law was passed.

"The Field Act ... guaranteed they would have that information and make good use of it," said Peter Yanev, a World Bank earthquake engineer with more than 40 years of experience studying seismic building failures. "Otherwise, what's the use?"

Until now, experts such as Yanev said they had believed nearly every school project in California had been certified.

When California Watch asked about uncertified schools last spring, then-State Architect David Thorman, who was appointed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ordered his office to examine more than 1,000 school construction projects that, records indicated, were completed with unresolved safety problems.

Soon thereafter, the state architect's office began downgrading the most serious uncertified projects without visiting the schools, according to interviews and records. Regulators only reviewed some of the paperwork in the project files, according to an e-mail from Masha Lutsuk, an administrator at the state architect's office.

The division started to worry about how the public might react. At a meeting of prominent architects, engineers and builders last year, while discussing the certification issue and California Watch's investigation, a regional manager for the division said: "It is only a matter of time before this explodes in all our faces."

At the same time, the state braced itself for questions about what it had done.

The media staff at the Department of General Services - which oversees the state architect's office - created talking points describing these projects as simply bookkeeping issues. "Sensitivity has increased as to reporters digging deep into government business. People need to be mindful of what they put in e-mails," stated internal minutes from a November 2009 meeting with top managers at the state architect's office.

By December 2010, only 192 school projects retained their uncertified status due to unresolved safety issues.

California Watch found projects with potential safety problems, including at least one that had been recently reclassified as a paperwork issue.