Posted by PA Parent, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Oct 17, 2009 at 9:27 am Walter,
The safest place should be in a school. However, whether it is depends on a lot of things happening exactly right in government, exactly the things you tend to be most critical of:
Search for the following 2004 fema document online:
fema_424_ch4.pdf Making Schools Safe Against Earthquakes":
"Reinforced concrete frames are made ductile by introducing an
appropriate, code-specified amount of specifically designed steel
reinforcing; unfortunately, the need for this was not recognized
in seismic codes until the mid-1970s and so a large inventory of
these types of structure exists"
"Newer structures, employing frames and fewer walls, also per-
form effectively if well designed and constructed;"
"In California, no school child has been killed or seriously
injured since 1933. This good fortune has been primarily because
all major California earthquakes since 1925 have occurred outside
school hours."
"[In Northridge] There was, however, considerable nonstructural damage that was costly to
repair, resulting in the closure of a number of schools and, if the schools had been in session, would have caused casualties. The Field Act focused on structural design and construction, and only recently were nonstructural elements included in the scope of the Act ["recent" being 2004]"
See p. 33 about the impact on the children and community when a school is severely damaged and takes time to repair after a quake.
"As previously mentioned, in California, K-12 schools are regu-
lated by the Field Act, which is the only significant legislation
that singles out the design and construction of schools to resist
earthquakes and is an important model. However, the Field Act
is not a code; [read the rest about what it is]"
"The performance of school buildings in recent California earth-
quakes substantiates this; structural damage has been minimal
in the more recently designed schools. ...
"Some qualifications, however, follow:
❍ Even in California, the standards of code enforcement vary
considerably, and smaller jurisdictions may not have trained
engineering staff to conduct effective plan checks and
inspections.
❍ The nonstructural provisions of the seismic codes are
often not adopted at the local level. Even in California,
nonstructural components have not been regulated to the
same level of care as structural components, and have been
the cause of considerable economic loss and disruption of
operation.
❍ In regions of moderate earthquake risk that have recently
introduced seismic design regulation, the code may be
misinterpreted and design errors made due to inexperience
of both designers and building officials."
Points from the above
1) We thought we were pretty modern and advanced in the '60s and early '70s, yet the above points out how (after a damaging event at a specific point of time), we realized we weren't as advanced as we thought. Why should NOW be the point in time when our design is foolproof (like the Titanic?)
2) Low rates of deaths in schools from seismic events have largely been due to luck from the timing of the quakes outside of school hours. Even the new Field Act, which has definitely helped, didn't account for aspects of building that pose significant casualty risk (nonstructural elements).
3) Catastrophic events usually result from a cascade of mistakes (often involving hubris). Structural safety will depend on a lot of factors that the above point out have multiple pathways for error -- error that is not just possible, but probable given past experience and how the above applies to our locality.
4) In the event of any error, a single-story structure will be safer than a multi-story structure.
We are going to be spending millions extra just to build up. See the following State of California document on cost reduction in public school construction Web Link
See section 7.1.6 "Multistory construction cost is more expensive than one story, and generally there is not a significant reduction in land usage (and therefore cost) to offset the additional construction cost." (We already own the land anyway.) So what justifies this huge expenditure?
We are spending millions more and taking additional risks. Surely, we must have a good reason for this? The reason is that our administrators have decided to use the money we allocated to improve our schools to expand them, and expansions is deemed more important than the extra millions in expense and the additional risk. Will it improve our schools? Research on education mostly says we'd be better off with three reasonable sized schools than two extra-large ones. And the latter would probably be cheaper and safer, given the same level of attention.
Come on Walter, don't be selective about your skepticism of the competence of government! Given what I have seen -- and given past problems in the district -- I would not want to bank on what we need to bank on to have the kind of confidence you expressed in your last post.
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