Quake Safety Problems at Capistrano Unified Schools?

How safe is your school in an earthquake? Patch.com has partnered with California Watch, the state’s largest investigative reporting team, to find out.

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

Data from the Division of the State Architect’s Office 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.

A separate inventory completed nine years ago found 7,500 seismically risky school buildings in the state.

Where do Capistrano Unified schools stand in all of this? The answer is a bit murky. A 2007 school district report found significant safety hazards on at least four campuses:  , , and .

Other local schools might also have been red-flagged, but Patch was granted only limited access to the seismic analysis. A spokesman for the did not respond to Patch's requests for comments for this story.

So, it's unclear whether the district took steps to remedy the hazards described in its own report. State records also indicate the four schools Patch reviewed are "likely not to perform well in an earthquake," but those records are sometimes out of date.

With that caveat, Patch asked an outside seismic expert to offer his take on the problems found in 2007 (the consultant hired by CUSD appears to be out of business).

CUSD EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

The dangers catalogued in CUSD's campus quake safety report included:

• faulty roof construction and supports
• buildings so close together they could knock into each other during a quake 
• an insufficient number of walls in some classroom buildings.

Santa Ana seismic expert Chris Marinescu, vice president of AllWest Environmental, said the issues likely reflect either a failure by architects to understand seismic safety codes, or a failure by contractors to build according to specifications.

“It looks to me that this is a design issue,” he said Wednesday.

ROOF-WALL ANCHORS

In the 2007 report, walls inadequately anchored to roofs were found throughout the four campuses reviewed by Patch.

Marinescu said the flaws could cause roofs to collapse during an earthquake or, at best, force the building to close afterward for lengthy and expensive repairs.

“This anchoring is a major issue,” he said, specifically talking about the San Clemente High School gymnasium. “You cannot afford in a building like this to have inadequate anchoring of the walls to the roof frame.”

Faulty roof anchoring was also found in five other SCHS spots: a restroom, two administration buildings, the instructional resource center and a classroom building.

Shorecliffs Middle School also had a building with roof-wall anchor flaws, as did a San Juan Elementary restroom.

Crown Valley Elementary, which also lacks Field Act certification paperwork, had roof-anchor problems in four classroom buildings and one multipurpose building.

CROSSTIES AND BLOCKING

Another serious seismic issue involved crossties, the support beams that hold up a roof. Marinescu said the beams must be fortified at the joints with special hardware. 

But they weren't constructed correctly in a restroom and an administrative building at San Clemente High, another building at Shorecliffs, at least one classroom at San Juan Elementary School, and kindergarten and multipurpose buildings at Crown Valley Elementary. 

Another trouble area was “unblocked” roofs. Typically, roofs are built with 4-by-8-foot sheets of plywood. On large roofs carrying a lot of load, the plywood sheets should be blocked, or nailed into a chuck of the frame on all four sides, Marinescu said.

However, at Crown Valley Elementary, the same kindergarten and multipurpose buildings that had crosstie problems were also unblocked, according to the 2007 report. Ditto for a restroom at San Clemente High.

OTHER ISSUES

Other, more minor, problems included flimsy connections between walls and roofs that could cause dangerous movement during a quake.

Also, the gym at San Clemente High School was located too close to a neighboring building. In a quake, the two structures could sway back and forth and slam into each other, Marinescu said. Or, with luck, the buildings might sway in sync and never come in contact.

Even if a school’s construction is sound, it could face other hazards. California Watch created an interactive map that charts school locations in relation to earthquake faults, landslide areas and liquefaction zones. In liquefaction zones, soil can turn to mush during strong tremors, shaking buildings more violently and damaging underground infrastructure.

But it's important to note that local school district officials and builders can be criminally prosecuted if students or staff are injured by tremor damage at an uncertified campus. Therefore, district officials are generally careful to hire their own inspectors and not open any structure that isn’t deemed up to snuff, said Eric Lamoureux, a spokesman for the Division of the State Architect.

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