[californiadisasters] State Failing To Enforce Seismic Rules For Schools

State failing to enforce seismic rules for schools

Corey G. Johnson, California Watch

San Francisco Chronicle

california watch April 7, 2011 04:00 AM Copyright california watch. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Friday, April 8, 2011

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."

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View entire article here:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/07/MN5J1IPS52.DTL#ixzz1IxOLholb

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