Effects from the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 can still be felt today as building repairs continue on seismically-damaged buildings at SF State draining money from the CSU Capital Planning budget.
Major seismic safety projects on campus include a project to remedy falling hazards on all exterior buildings, seismically strengthen the J. Paul Leonard Library and develop designs and strengthen the HSS Building and Hensill Hall.
The cost of these four projects is $11 million and does not include preliminary design work, according to the Report on the Condition of the University Facilities done by Capital Planning in November 1994.
"We went through the campus and looked for all the buildings that did not make it on to our list for structural safety. We looked for other conditions, falling tiles off of roofs, precast panels, heavy air conditioning units poised above bleachers in gymnasiums, all of the things that represent a substantial life safety risk," Professor Charles Thiel, chairman of the Seismic Review Board, said.
Construction funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government's disaster relief fund, began on the library in August 1994, and on the Administration Building in February of this year.
"Basically, they are repairing structural damage -- cracks in the concrete sheerwalls are being repaired with an epoxy system," Director of Capital Planning Steve Jack said. "The other is aesthetic damage in terms of superficial cracks in the plaster which are being patched and repaired with the same materials."
Plans to seismically upgrade those buildings are awaiting state funding.
"One of the critical issues facing SF State, as well as other CSU campuses, is investing in seismic upgrades to protect the safety of students, faculty and staff according to the report.
The Seismic Review Board determines and evaluates which buildings need seismic upgrading. A 1992-93 assessment of the CSU system by the Seismic Review Board ranks the 100 most likely buildings to need renovation from earthquake damage. SF State has 12 buildings in the upper half of that list, five of those are in the top 10. A revised ranking is scheduled for release in about one week. "After further investigation some of the buildings on the original list were determined not to be particularly vulnerable," Thiel said.
In 1990-91, four corner columns in the library were reinforced on the most recent addition to the library, the sixth floor addition on the north side of the building. SF State was one of the campuses given a campus-wide falling hazards assessment. "Each campus has situations where in smaller earthquakes buildings would start dropping panels long before they would begin to see structural damage to the buildings," Thiel said.
According to Thiel, one such incident occurred in October 1987 when the Whittier and Narrows quake, registering 5.9 along the Elysian Park Faultline, shook Long Beach and knocked panels off of a parking structure, killing a student.
Eve-Van Petty, an SF State senior marketing major who spends most of his time in the Business Building, wonders how safe the Business and Science buildings are because "they look so old," he said.
To arrive at ratings for buildings on campus, national building experts use an index that compares the cost of correcting building problems to the current replacement costs of those buildings. This index is called the Facility Condition Index.
Facilities that require repairs that will cost less than 5 percent of the cost of building a new facility are considered good. Repairs that will cost between 5 percent and 10 percent are considered fair while anything over 10 percent is considered poor. The Science Building needed repairs that would cost 21 percent of the cost of replacing the entire building and the Business Building needed repairs that would cost 15 percent of the cost of replacing the building.
"Overall, the FCI for all university facilities is 22.7 percent indicating that the campus is in very poor condition," according to the report.
On the exterior of Hensill Hall, panels attached to the buildings represent a "life safety risk" to those around the building if they fall, but they don't represent a serious threat to the building itself in terms of stability, Thiel said.
Money for capital improvements used to be $300 million a year systemwide but has been cut to $150 million systemwide.
Requesting funds is a three-step process in which costs are allotted for design, for working drawings, and for the actual construction.
The Chancellor's Office reviews the requests, then prioritizes the projects systemwide and puts together a package that is sent to the State Department of Finance for approval.
"The Seismic Review Board came up with a listing of 100, then gave us the money to do the studies for the various buildings they had selected. From that we've determined what it's going to cost to do the upgrade. But, with this new list of 100, we don't know where the buildings are in terms of priority. Our status may have changed, I don't know. So that will have some impact on what projects on this campus get funded," Jack said.