Imagine a massive earthquake. Books, dishes and vases fly off shelves. Window glass shatters. The ground tilts under your feet.
Imagine, after that terror, you hear that your local elementary school has completely collapsed. Kids are trapped inside. Maybe they’re your kids or grandkids. Maybe they’re a friend’s kids. Maybe you don’t know them at all. But you know the most important thing is to get them out. Even if you’re bloody or bruised, you find a way to get to that school to help.
This isn’t an unlikely scenario for 119 communities around the state. More than 70,000 Utah K-12 students attend schools with at least one unreinforced masonry (URM) building, which are prone to collapse in an earthquake. Built brick-on-brick or stone-on-stone, without steel reinforcement, the walls of URM structures can literally be shaken to pieces.
In 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that, in the next 50 years, the Wasatch Front has a 57% chance of a magnitude 6.0 or higher earthquake, and a 43% chance of a magnitude 6.75 or higher quake.
Historically, large quakes along the Wasatch Front have been around magnitude 7.0. That is 90 times more powerful than the 5.7 Magna quake many Utah residents vividly recall from March 2020.
Even that relatively small earthquake severely damaged school buildings. Bricks crashed down from the facade of Silver Crest Elementary School. West Lake STEM Junior High had to be demolished. Thankfully, no one was hurt because schools were closed due to COVID.
We weren’t prepared. We were lucky.
The Utah Seismic Safety Commission explained the risks to Utah schools — in graphic detail — to the Legislature. What did our representatives do? Instead of taking action, they shot the messenger: They voted to dissolve the commission entirely.
Lawmakers also allocated $100 million for new school security measures to stop would-be shooters. But what about the $4 million — recommended by the Utah Seismic Safety Commission — to determine which URM schools should be retrofitted and which rebuilt?
Of course, school security is important. School shootings cut short young lives, devastate families and terrorize communities.
So do natural disasters that hit vulnerable schools.
Just ask residents of Moore, Oklahoma, where seven third-graders died in 2013 when a tornado flattened Plaza Towers Elementary School, a cinderblock building constructed in 1966 that lacked the kind of “safe space” current building codes mandate. Or the families of the more than 5,000 school children who perished in substandard school buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China.
Still, the state balks at funding earthquake preparedness for schools. Why? Because, the argument goes, school districts are locally controlled and must fund their own infrastructure.
The Legislature is saying, “It’s not our problem.” But we need everyone to make school earthquake safety their problem. You need to make it your problem. Because 70,000 students are at risk in the schools we require them to attend. That’s 20,000 more than fit in the Rice-Eccles football stadium (or, if you bleed blue, that’s 7,000 more than the LaVell Edwards stadium).
Individual parents and community members need to make it their problem. PTAs need to make it their problem. The Legislature needs to make it their problem. Gov. Spencer Cox needs to make it his problem.
Failure to act creates serious equity issues. The upshot of insisting that local districts assess — and pay for — their own earthquake readiness is that, in recent years, many high income school districts have built new, state-of-the-art facilities to replace their old, dangerous buildings. Meanwhile, students in lower income areas are left attending unsafe schools.
Last year, the Utah PTA passed a resolution calling on Utahns to address school seismic safety. You can follow their lead by going to earthquakes.utah.gov to find out whether the schools in your neighborhood are safe.
If they are not, talk to local school officials, your school community council, and your local PTA. Let them know how important school seismic safety is. And if they are safe, take a long look at the list of schools throughout the state that are vulnerable. Voice your concern for the safety of all Utah schools.
Write or call your state representatives. Ask that the Legislature act immediately to improve seismic safety for every school. Plead for funding to evaluate URM buildings in low income districts and to rebuild or retrofit these structures.
Legislators and citizens alike need to show up for students now, just as we would show up in a moment of crisis. Let’s show up to keep kids safe from dangerous school buildings. Let’s rescue those students today — before they need rescue with shovels and ambulances tomorrow.
(Sierra Sun) Sierra Sun is a high school senior in Sandy.
Sierra Sun is a high school senior in Sandy. She has been working on school seismic safety issues for the last five years as a member of Jane Goodall’s national Roots & Shoots Youth Council USA.
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