Dear Everyone;
After the Sichuan earthquake news reports came out of numerous schools collapsing. Then the figures came out of 10,000 school children killed in those collapsed schools. You may have seen the pictures of those horrified and grieving parents.
Further reports detailed sloppy school construction despite specific standards needed for earthquake-proofing schools. Too much sand and too little concrete - smaller rebar than needed and rebar not wired together - hollow core flooring not anchored properly to main support beams and so on and so on.
Gosh that sounds like public housing project construction and one wonders how many schools built here in California. Bureaucrats being bureaucrats don't hold your breaths that seismic retrofitting has been done on your childs school.
I wrote LTE's to the SF Examiner and the SF Chronicle about the Bay Area facing the same prospect because of delayed retrofitting and the SF Examiner published.
This could just as easily apply to southern California or anywhere earthquakes can happen - which is just about anywhere across the US. Are your children safe in their schools from earthquake collapse - I doubt it.
Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
Hostis res Publica
Earthquake-proof the schools
Some 10,000 children died in the Sichuan province earthquake when their supposedly earthquake-proof schools collapsed. These parents are now asking civic leaders how the schools could’ve collapsed if they were earthquake-proof.
This could happen in the Bay Area if the San Andreas or Hayward faults were to start trembling.
Seismic retrofit bonds were approved to retrofit earthquake collapse prone schools. However, not all the retrofitting has been completed for schools in danger of earthquake collapse.
Right now, get students out of those dangerous schools and into earthquake-proof classrooms. We don’t need more grieving parents created by apathetic civic leaders and delayed retrofits. Tomorrow could really be too late.
Ron Getty
San Francisco