Earthquake Country? Watsonville Schools Have Already Been Tested

When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck Northern California on Oct. 17, 1989, a few schools in the Pajaro Valley Unifed School District sustained cracked retaining walls and other cursory damage.

The two structures that were seriously impacted—at Watsonville High and Pajaro Middle schools—were later removed.

That was it pretty much it, said Brett McFadden, the school district's chief business officer.

"In the 1989 earthquake, the epicenter was basically in our district," McFadden said.

The 6.9-magnitude quake radiated from a fault line beneath The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Aptos, between and Aptos Junior High, both part of PVUSD.

“We fared pretty well in that," McFadden said. "... None of our schools were taken offline as a result of that earthquake."

More than 20 years later, 16 school properties made a state Department of State Architecture list of buildings not expected to withstand future earthquakes and urgently in need of further structural evaluation to gauge needed repairs.

But school district officials said this week that all of the buildings used by student have met architectural and safety standards.

“We believe that all of our facilities are up to code and up to state standards," McFadden said.

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

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 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 California Watch Map of flagged schools shows that 16 PVUSD properties, including at least 10 that are part of in-use schools, have been designated as an AB-300 structure. In 1999, Assembly Bill 300 (AB 300), was approved by the state Legislature, giving the go-ahead on a statewide survey of school buildings to determine their earthquake readiness. Buildings that did not pass the test were given the AB 300 label.

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.

Although officials in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District could not give specifics about the 16 AB-300 projects this week—McFadden and Rick Mullikin, the director of maintenance, operations and facilities, were both in Southern California for a conference, and some of the files have been mothballed—they said they've taken a cursory review of the list and believe all of the projects have been completed.

The AB-300 projects include three issues at and one each at Aptos High, and , Valencia, and Calabasas elementary schools. Five projects are not linked to a school on the list, and the 16th project is tied to Aromas Elementary School, which has not been a part of the school district for years.

After a bond measure failed at the polls in the late 1990s, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District received tens of millions in "hardship" state funding to modernization projects, including seismic retrofits, McFadden said.

"Over the years, the district has done a number of seismic upgrades," Mullikin said.

That work included reinforcing roofs and using steel beams in attics to prevent buildings from shifting during seismic activity, according to Mullikin.

However, district officials stop short of deeming their schools earthquake-safe.

“Whats’ so hard for folks in my business is to say we’re 100 percent safe, because there’s just no way to know. The earthquake in Japan shows clearly that we builder/planner-types didn’t think of every contingency,” McFadden said.

“Our hope is that living in one of the most active seismic areas in the world, that that’s going to be sufficient enough to serve our community’s needs.”

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. Read more about Patch's collaboration with California Watch. 

Watsonville Patch will continue to report on the AB-300 projects in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District.