Statewide Investigation Looks at Seismic Safety of Coronado Schools

is the only school in Coronado that is located in an earthquake-prone area. It is one of 87 schools in San Diego County that rests within a quarter mile of a fault line.

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

The investigation found that two buildings at Silver Strand were on the AB 300 list, a decade-old inventory of school buildings with potentially dangerous seismic hazards. (To view the complete interactive map, click here.)

But Tom Silva, construction manager for the , said several buildings at the elementary school have been rebuilt since the AB 300 list was compiled in 2002.

He suspects the flagged buildings may have been two temporary structures that were being used during construction at the elementary school.

“It’s hard to say what they [the violations] were, because those buildings are no longer there,” Silva explained.

The portables have since been removed, and the buildings have been completely rebuilt.   

“I can tell you all schools in Coronado have verification through the Field Act,” he added. “There’s no issue there.”   

California began regulating school architecture for seismic safety with the Field Act in 1933, 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 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. 

“All schools in Coronado Unified, in fact all district-owned facilities including the district office and the maintenance and operations building, have Field Act-approved buildings, meaning that the design and construction meet the higher standards for seismic safety,” Silva said.

He point out that schools, hospitals and highways are held to more rigorous standards, and schools are considered emergency centers in the case of a natural disaster.

The aftermath of the March 11 massive earthquake in Japan has heightened concerns about seismic safety. But the Coronado school district says it is prepared.

“Whenever there’s an earthquake, whether it’s here or all the way across the ocean, we immediately do a survey in the field,” he said. “We don’t change our practices, because we’ve already got them in place.”

They are trained to look for damage, such as cracking, and potential hazards, such as gas leaks. As an example, Silva cited the earthquake that struck San Diego on Easter Sunday 2010.

“We scoured the schools,” he said.

Jim Mazurkiewicz, the district’s supervisor of maintenance, operations and transportation, noted that every school has employees, including the maintenance team, principals and administrators, who have been trained through the Fire Department’s Community Emergency Response Team program.

“We have a team in place. They know what to search for, how to do shutdowns, etc.,” said Mazurkiewicz, who serves as a 24/7 liaison between the school district and the police and fire departments. “We keep up with it very well. But we are always looking at how we can improve.”

Silva added, “Student safety is our number one priority, and that’s true of everything we do here.”

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