Oregon’s steps toward school seismic safety: Earthquakes and schools, Part 2

When a 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook California in March 1933, it exposed weaknesses in school building construction methods. Some 70 schools were completely destroyed , while hundreds more were damaged.

That quake, called the Long Beach earthquake, happened in the evening, when most schools were empty. But the community understood that the timing was a lucky twist of fate and acted almost immediately. Within a month of the earthquake, legislation was proposed and then signed into law to mandate seismic safety standards for all public school buildings in California.

But geologists did not yet understand that Oregon also faced the likelihood of earthquakes. It would be over 40 years before Oregon considered seismic safety in building codes and many more years before the state took a ha