The Field Act: History and Issues for California Schools

Abstract

California's Field Act, which sets seismic safety standards for pubic and private schools, has been a central element of that state's earthquake preparedness policy for decades. It remains a controversial and much-debated issue, however. Various state officials and regulatory agencies have alternately supported the legislation as a guardian of students' security, denounced it as being too stringent, and criticized it as not being stringent enough. This report discusses the Field Act, its history, and current relevant issues. The first section discusses the history of various California earthquakes and their relation to several pieces of legislation passed in response to them, including the Field Act. The second section discusses current policy issues relating to the Field Act, namely its applicability to various types of schools, its applicability to relocatable and leased buildings, and its relation to the Uniform Building Code. The report concludes with a discussion of the relative merits and shortcomings of the Field Act, as well as similar measures taken in other regions. ### Long Beach Earthquake The 1933 Long Beach, California earthquake ( M 6.3) graphically demonstrated the vulnerability of school buildings (Figure 1). A contemporaneous account reported: More significant than the damage to commercial buildings, residences, and other types of structures, was the exposure of the general weakness of the schools in which the children of all families congregate each day. In Long Beach, in Compton, in Huntington Park — in fact in every community where the earthquake was at all intense — severe damage to school buildings was general. Auditoriums collapsed, walls were thrown down, and the very exits to safety were piled high with debris which a few moments before had been heavy parts of towers and ornamental entrances. It is sufficient to suggest the terrible consequences had the same earthquake occurred a few hours earlier. (USDC, 1973) Schools …