Hundreds of Washington schools have failed grades for earthquake safety

Tens of thousands of Washington state public school students returned to classes this month in school buildings believed to be at risk of collapsing due to a powerful earthquake.

A new report to the state legislature compiled by state geologists and a structural engineering firm gave the lowest possible seismic safety rating for more than 90% of school buildings assessed in a selective statewide survey.

Structural engineers hired by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources have visually inspected 561 school buildings over the past four years, assessing basic geology and reviewing architectural drawings as they become available. Their report assigned a star rating for each school, ranging from one star on the low end to five stars for the safest schools.

A total of 93% of school buildings evaluated received a one-star structural safety rating; 4% had a 2-star rating. Only 3% were rated three stars or better.

“One-star buildings mean there is a collapse risk in multiple or widespread locations in the school building,” said Corina Allen, senior hazard geologist at the state Department of Natural Resources and lead of the school’s seismic safety project.

Allen said the high percentage of old, incomplete buildings “wasn’t too surprising” given how schools were chosen to study.

“We were intentionally looking at high-risk school buildings and schools that were located in high-risk areas of earthquakes and tsunami areas,” Allen said in an interview. “The new schools are expected to perform much better in the event of a major earthquake.”

Of the more than 4,000 K-12 school buildings in use in Washington, the project prioritized scrutiny of those built before 1975 when building codes were tightened. Schools in Seattle, the state’s largest area, and nearby Bellevue were not examined because they had already seismically modernized many of their schools, according to the report’s authors.

“We have a huge problem with school safety in this state and the legislature needs to act on it,” replied Jim Buck, an emergency preparedness volunteer who lives west of Port Angeles and previously represented the Olympic Peninsula in the state House of Representatives.

“It’s not something they can push into a school district and say, ‘Okay, it’s your problem. Go and pass a tax.’ Buck said.

Buck and his wife are so concerned that government budget writers are neglecting earthquake risk in schools, they have taken it upon themselves to write an English-language summary of their latest report and add a call to action. This week, they mailed or mailed this package to more than 4,000 principals, school board members, fire chiefs, county commissioners, PTA members and others across the state to coincide with the start of the school year.

Buck noted that Washington lags far behind Oregon, California and British Columbia in making seismic modifications to public school buildings. In the past four years, the British Columbia government has approved more than $1.2 billion (US$953 million) in seismic upgrades or replacements at 58 district-level schools, so that the more than 31,400 students at the school can be better protected during the earthquake.

Oregon legislators established the seismic modernization grant program for vulnerable public schools, hospitals, fire stations, and police over a decade ago. It is financed through the sale of state bonds. As of last year, the program has gradually awarded more than $456 million in support since the first grant was issued in 2009.

Geologist Allen has commended policymakers in her state of Washington for stepping up their support for seismic safety upgrades at the school following two studies that now show a high risk of earthquakes on school buildings. The Washington DNR previously published a risk analysis in 2019 based on an initial round of structural surveys in schools.

“I think these studies made a difference,” Allen said. “There is a long way to go. We have a lot of catching up to do for seismic retrofitting to all the schools that need it.”

The Washington legislature has included $40 million in the state’s current two-year construction budget for a grant program intended for retrofits in schools managed by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Education. This is an increase over the $13 million allocated in the previous 2019-21 budget cycle.

Former lawmaker Buck called these spending figures “budget dust” compared to the size of the need and the state’s general budget. Buck was particularly angry that the legislature had appropriated more money to renovate the Capitol campus where lawmakers are working at Olympia—$100 million over the next two years—than seismic upgrades to the buildings the children go to.

The school’s latest seismic safety project report described three sources of earthquake risk in the Pacific Northwest. The most famous of these is the Cascadia Offshore Fault Zone, the origin of catastrophic earthquakes of magnitude 8 to 9, known as the “Great Earthquake” that occur approximately every 300 to 600 years.

The northwest also experiences earthquakes of up to magnitude 7 from shallow crustal faults that affect smaller geographical areas on either side of the falls. The most common strong earthquakes in the region are the slightly deeper tremors that originate in the plate covering the subduction zone. The magnitude 6.8 earthquake in 2001 is a good example of one of these. This summer’s school seismic safety report to the legislature estimated that there is an approximately 85% chance of another deep earthquake in Washington state in the next 50 years, based on USGS research.

[Copyright 2021 Northwest News Network]

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