The Brief

Is my kid’s local LAUSD campus earthquake safe?

That’s what listener Connie Lichtenstein wanted to know after she found out that the school they were considering sending one of their children to had a building that may need to be retrofitted.

After looking into it I can say it’s a complicated question with an unsatisfying answer, but it’s worth exploring because it can give Connie and maybe even you, an insight into earthquake safety at schools, about which questions have been raised before.

What is Assembly Bill 300?

In 1999, the California legislature passed AB 300, which directed the Department of General Services to put together a list of public school structures that didn't meet a major 1976 code overhaul called the Uniform Building Code.

More than 9,600 buildings across the state were identified for review, according to a 2002 report prepared by the DGS.

After assessments, each of those structures fell into one of two categories:

1. Those that are likely to do well in an earthquake (2,122 structures)
2. Those that might be a danger and need to be evaluated (7,537 structures)

According to representatives from LAUSD, 667 district buildings were ultimately identified as needing seismic evaluations.

Since then:

• 34 buildings have been successfully retrofitted
• 139 buildings have had their seismic evaluations completed and are in some stage of the retrofit process
• 459 structures are still in the process of being assessed for seismic safety

All tilt-up, non-ductile concrete and brick buildings (one of the riskiest types of buildings) have been demolished or retrofitted.

LAUSD lists their building inventory online, but that only identifies 645 out of a potential 667 buildings. It's unclear why. Representatives say it's up to date.

A classroom.

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What does LAUSD say?

I requested an interview with an expert from LAUSD to discuss the safety issue and was denied.

After more than a week of waiting for answers to a list of questions, the school district followed up with a statement from a spokesperson.

Looking for clarity, I asked: Are students and faculty safe inside of buildings on the AB 300 list in the event of an earthquake, even if a building has not yet been assessed or had its retrofit completed? Are they expected to meet life safety performance? The question that's at the crux of this entire piece?

LAUSD did not answer the question.

So ... is my kid's school safe?

If you do find out that one of the unimproved buildings is on your kid's campus, should you be worried?

"The fact that the building is on this list doesn't automatically make it a highly vulnerable building," said Henry Burton, an associate professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UCLA.

"Because of the number of variables that are involved it's very hard to say if there's a building that's in imminent danger."

A whole lot of work goes into figuring out if a building is going to perform OK in an earthquake. Experts need to review building plans, do on the ground assessments, take into consideration everything from materials to the way that they're joined together. They also need to do ground motion modeling that considers different types of potential quakes.

If they do find out that a building needs to be retrofitted, the structures often need to be opened up for expensive improvements that can take years to complete.

Students at Bryant Elementary School take cover under their desks during an earthquake drill as part of the Great ShakeOut event on October 18, 2018 in San Francisco, California.

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Multiple structural engineers I spoke with also said that even if a building was built 100 years ago, that doesn't necessarily mean it won't do well in a quake.

"Usually when I'm talking with parents, I will often throw my poor daughter under the bus by reaching the conclusion that there aren't too many school buildings out there that I would not allow my daughter to go to class in," said Kenneth O'Dell, a structural engineer in Long Beach.

"I have confidence in the building inventory within the local market for schools. And that confidence comes largely from the knowledge that the Division of State Architect has been involved in certifying school buildings since shortly after the 1933 earthquake."

The structural integrity of schools has been a priority in California since 1933, after the Long Beach Earthquake destroyed 70 schools. Luckily, students weren't in school at the time and mass death was avoided. A month later the legislature passed the Field Act, which set more strict building requirements for schools than were previously in place. It's often pointed out that since then, no school buildings in California have collapsed in an earthquake.

Ultimately, it's up to you to decide if you're OK with the risk, as is always the case when we talk about anything disaster related. That was the entire conclusion of our podcast The Big One, which dives deep on the impacts of a major San Andreas earthquake.

“If they continue to be on this list and they're not retrofitted in any way, then yeah I think I would either continue homeschooling my kids or I would find a school for them that isn't on that list that we don't have to worry about," said Lichtenstein, when I told her what I learned.

What should I ask my child's school?

"The only thing I would suggest is to try to get more information from the relevant school district about what they're doing about the buildings, and if they have a sense of the timeline for evaluating and retrofitting these buildings," Burton said.

Feel free to ask either your kid's school or an LAUSD board member about a particular building, whether it's been assessed and what its shortcomings may be. If you get stonewalled or find anything out, shoot me a note.

Outside of structural safety, there are some important questions about earthquakes that the school should be able to answer:

• What are the school's earthquake plans and can you see them?
• What sorts of supplies do they have available and when were they updated?
• What sorts of precautions are they taking in terms of strapping down heavy items in the classroom and how often are classrooms inspected?
• Where will parents be able to pick up kids after an earthquake?
• If you can't get to your kids after the earthquake, what happens?
• Is there anything you can prepare for your child in anticipation of a disaster to make them more comfortable while they're waiting?

You should also consider printing out an emergency card and sticking it in your kid's backpack, so they always have critical information on them that they can refer to amidst the chaos.

The United States evacuated diplomats as attacks intensified across the Middle East, with drones striking the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, while President Trump signaled the conflict with Iran could turn into an extended war.

Israel said it sent ground forces across the border into southern Lebanon and bombed Beirut suburbs as fighting with the Iran-backed group Hezbollah resumed after more than a year.

The U.S. and Israel kept up their attacks in Iran, where the death toll rose Tuesday to 787 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. Explosions were heard in Iran's capital of Tehran and other parts of the country.

Trump said Monday that the war could last four to five weeks, but could go longer than that.

In a social media post, Trump said that the U.S. had a "virtually unlimited supply" of munitions. "Wars can be fought 'forever,' and very successfully, using just these supplies," Trump wrote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox it would not lead to an "endless war."

The war has so far killed six U.S. service members, according to the Pentagon, which warns that more casualties are expected.

Ten people in Israel have died since Iran began retaliating with missile attacks there.

Here are more of the key updates NPR is reporting on.

To jump to specific areas of coverage, use the links below:

U.S. Embassies | Americans evacuate | Lebanon | U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran | Strait of Hormuz | Global natural gas

U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia hit

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia Tuesday urged Americans to avoid the compound after the Saudi Defense Ministry said the diplomatic post had been attacked by two drones.

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry called it "a flagrant Iranian attack" in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

There were no immediate reports of injuries. The Defense Ministry said the drone strikes caused "limited fire and minor damage" to the U.S. Embassy.

The State Department has ordered evacuations of diplomatic missions in several Middle Eastern countries.

This comes after an Iranian attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait on Monday. The embassy said on social media Tuesday that it was closing until further notice.

In Jordan, the State Department said Tuesday it had evacuated its large embassy in the Jordanian capital Amman after threats against it.

Iran has been striking Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates that are normally considered safe in retaliation to U.S. attacks that started Saturday. Iran has also hit commercial targets after warning that it would attack American interests across the region.

Amazon said Monday that two of its data centers in the UAE and one of its centers in Bahrain were hit by drones, affecting their operations.

— Jane Arraf and Hadeel Al-Shalchi

Americans urged to leave several countries

The State Department urged Americans to leave more than a dozen countries and territories in the Middle East because of the conflict, even as options to leave narrowed with flight cancellations and airport closures.

Americans need to "DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks," Mora Namdar, the State Department's assistant secretary for consular affairs, said in a post on X.

The countries and areas included:

• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Iran 
• Iraq
• Israel 
• Jordan 
• Kuwait 
• Lebanon
• The West Bank and Gaza 
• Oman
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia 
• Syria 
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen
  

— Ayana Archie

Israel resumes strikes in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah

The Israeli military said soldiers were "operating in southern Lebanon" as it continues strikes against Hezbollah, including in the Lebanese capital.

Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire in November 2024 but Israel has continued almost daily strikes since then. Iran-backed Hezbollah had refrained from attacks until Sunday, when it launched strikes in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Israeli military said Tuesday it targeted what it called Hezbollah command centers and weapons storage facilities in Beirut's southern suburbs.

"Let me be clear: this is not a ground maneuver into Lebanon. It is a tactical step to create an additional layer of security for the residents of northern Israel," said Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani describing the Israeli troop movements.

Thousands of Lebanese streamed out of Dahya, the suburb where Hezbollah, a political party as well as paramilitary group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and some other Western countries, is based.

They joined what the government says are at least 30,000 Lebanese fleeing Israeli strikes in south Lebanon and in Beirut. Shelters were so over-crowded some families resorted to laying out blankets on sidewalks of the corniche, Beirut's sea-side.

The Lebanese government says 52 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since Saturday.

— Jane Arraf

U.S. and Israel continue to strike Iran

In the Iranian capital, residents heard the sound of explosions overnight. There were no immediate reports of what had been hit.

Israel's military said it struck Iran's intelligence ministry and state broadcaster. The Israeli authorities also said that they are now focusing on targeting Iran's missiles and launchers.

Iranian missile strikes on Israel have significantly decreased. Israel says Iran may be rationing munitions gearing up for a long war.

An official in the region who spoke on condition of anonymity tells NPR Israel thinks it can achieve its war goals in two weeks total. Israeli officials say they want to create the conditions for Iranians to topple their government.

In Iran's southern city of Minab, a mass funeral was held for 165 people — most of them young girls — killed in an attack on a girls school Saturday. Many of the bodies had been buried under rubble.

The U.S. military said it was looking into reports of missiles hitting the school. The Israeli military said it was unaware of its forces operating in the area.

Some in the large crowd attending the funeral chanted "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and "No surrender."

Iran's Red Crescent Society said Tuesday at least 787 people have been killed in attacks on 153 cities across the country.

Ten people have been killed in Israel since the start of the conflict, according to Israeli officials.

— Daniel Estrin and Jane Arraf

Iran says it closed the Strait of Hormuz

Iran continued to threaten ships near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway vital to Gulf oil exports.

"The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Anyone who wants to pass, our devotee heroes in the IRGC navy and the army will set those ships on fire," security official Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, said Monday. "Don't come to this region."

In a sign of the vast repercussions of the war, Japan's Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told an Iranian envoy that Iran must reopen the waterway.

Global natural gas supplies greatly reduced

In addition to the effect of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on oil supplies, about 20% of the world's liquified natural gas, or LNG, is shipped through the Strait. On land, Iranian strikes hit Ras Laffan, the world's largest LNG export plant in Qatar. State-owned QatarEnergy says it has shut down LNG production.

Many countries are somewhat insulated from the disruptions in oil flows because they have oil in strategic reserves. But natural gas is a different story, says Anne-Sophie Corbeau,  a global research scholar at the Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Gas storage levels are particularly low because it's the end of winter.

" This is absolutely massive," Corbeau says. "It's going to impact everybody who is importing LNG."

Oil prices have risen since trading opened Monday, and so have natural gas prices in Asia and Europe. Energy experts say that higher gas prices and reduced LNG flows out of the Persian Gulf is highly profitable for LNG exporters elsewhere, including in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the U.S. The U.S. is the biggest exporter of LNG and is set to open a new LNG terminal in Texas soon.

— Julia Simon

Jane Arraf and Hadeel Al-Shalchi reported from Amman, Jordan; Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv, Israel; Ayana Archie from Washington; Julia Simon from San Francisco.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This first week of March will bring warm temperatures, plenty of sunshine and some windy conditions.

Coastal communities will wake up to some morning low clouds, even some patchy fog, followed by afternoon sunshine. Temperatures at L.A. County beaches will reach 67 to 72 degrees, but hover around the low 60s for Orange County beaches. Most of the region, including downtown L.A., should see highs in the low to mid 70s.

Valley communities and the Inland Empire will see highs mostly in the upper 70s, and up to 81 degrees in the western San Fernando Valley.

In Coachella Valley, the highs today are expected to reach up to 88 degrees.

As the cost of living continues to pinch Californians, state lawmakers have a new focus: bringing down the cost of housing construction to get more homes built quickly.

Their solution, so far, is to industrialize the building process by facilitating prefab, modular and manufactured housing. Earlier this year, a group of California lawmakers held a series of hearings as part of the Select Committee on Housing Construction Innovation to understand what barriers stand in the way of scaling up factory-built construction.

It comes after lawmakers last year passed a series of bills that streamlined environmental reviews for housing developments and transformed the way housing is built near transit.

“A key piece of making housing more affordable is bringing down the cost of construction,” Committee Chair and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) said in a statement to KQED. “Factory-built housing is not a silver bullet, but it can be part of the solution to our housing crisis.”

A report, published Monday, from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, found factory-built housing, also known as prefab and manufactured housing, could cut costs by up to 20% and slash building timelines in half — a key innovation needed to ramp up construction and meet the state’s goal of building 2.5 million homes by 2030.

A Factory OS employee work on the assembly process of modular homes at the Vallejo warehouse on August 6, 2020.

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But, these projects face big hurdles in securing financing and overcoming a patchwork of regulatory approvals that can vary by jurisdiction. Following the committee’s Construction Innovation hearings, state lawmakers now plan to introduce their own package of bills aiming to streamline the process.

Those efforts will dovetail with legislation at the federal level, where lawmakers are also trying to solve the nation’s growing housing affordability crisis, caused in part by a construction slump. Federal legislators are currently working on two separate bill packages taking aim at red tape and outdated safety standards which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle argue have prevented factories from churning out housing for decades.

And while there has historically been resistance from unions to factory-built housing, there is a growing recognition of the benefits to workers. Jeremy Smith, deputy legislative director for the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, said during a committee hearing that while the trades prefer on-site construction methods, modular-built housing “provides a solution to building — to actually building — more housing for people of all income levels.”

He pointed to Fullstack Modular, a construction company with a factory in Carson, Ca., which employs about 200 unionized workers to construct modular homes. He said working in a factory, as opposed to commuting long hours to job sites, benefits employees.

“Because of the consistent work hours and the factory location within the community, trades workers and more crafts people are able to consider the trades and still accommodate childcare and other life needs,” he said. “Workers who have not secured reliable transportation, for example, can more easily get to the stationary location of the Carson factory, making their transition into the building trades easier.”

Factory-built housing is not necessarily new in California. For years, a number of construction firms have offered modular housing or prefabricated units, which can be manufactured miles away and assembled on site. But many of those firms have failed to scale up and have shuttered their factories.

Michelle Boyd, chief strategy officer for Terner Labs, a nonprofit incubator program connected to the Terner Center, said the construction industry hasn’t changed in decades and neither have the laws or financing systems surrounding it.

“The construction industry has worked the way it’s worked for 100 years,” she said. “And there are many different silos. Every player has their own little piece of the puzzle on how you put a house together or an apartment together.”

But industrialized construction consolidates that system into one factory, and that, in turn, runs up against regulatory and financing norms, which makes it difficult for new types of construction to successfully enter — and stay — in the market.

When it comes to regulations, the Terner Center’s report details inconsistencies between local governments’ building codes as one barrier to be removed. Although the state has adopted a set of standards for housing built in factories, local governments still require certain plan reviews and inspections, which can change a standardized product into a bespoke project for each city.

On the finance side, banks and insurance agencies have funded traditional site-built housing for decades, so they understand the risks involved. But factory-built construction has yet to meet mainstream adoption, which means financial institutions have less data and experience to gauge risk. That makes it harder to access capital needed to get projects off the ground.

Boyd said that because developers sometimes have trouble finding financing, it means deals can fall through, resulting in holes in the factories’ production pipeline. When that happens, she said, “They can’t sustain that because they have to pay the wages, and so they close.”

But she argues, the state could work to assume some of the risk of the transaction and stabilize the pipeline so those holes don’t exist.

“One of the main policy areas that we uncovered is a role potentially for the state in helping hold some of that risk, so we’re not really asking these developers to risk losing a lot of money or having the deal go upside down halfway through,” she said.

Taken together, Boyd said, these proposed reforms, if implemented, could have the potential to jumpstart the industry, bringing down the cost of construction for builders, and hopefully, for homeowners too.

L.A. city leaders will discuss on Wednesday whether to pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the regional homelessness agency and assign different oversight.

L.A. County supervisors voted to withdraw funding for the L.A. Homeless Services Authority last April, citing ongoing problems with the agency's oversight of homelessness funds.

Now 10 months later, City Council members are planning to talk about whether to pull the city’s funds from LAHSA — which amount to just under $300 million this fiscal year.

It’s one of the most consequential decisions on homelessness city officials have faced in years. In deciding the future of LAHSA, the City Council will be deciding who will be entrusted with taxpayer funds meant to address the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population.

What the council will discuss

On Wednesday, the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee is scheduled to discuss a range of options that include:

• not changing anything major
• keeping the city money at LAHSA, but beefing up city oversight
• shifting the funding from LAHSA to direct city control
• shifting the city’s funding from LAHSA to the county homelessness department to administer it

The committee also is scheduled to discuss whether to pursue shifting the city’s federal homelessness funding from LAHSA to more direct city control.

The options were first laid out in a staff report to delivered last April, just over a year after it was requested by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.

At a City Council meeting in January, Rodriguez criticized housing and homelessness committee chair Nithya Raman for not scheduling a committee discussion on the options.

“It's been sitting [for] 280 days, a report in your committee that you won't hear,” Rodriguez said at the January meeting. “So let's stop playing this false notion of the arsonists showing up as the firefighters.”

Asked for a response Monday, Raman’s spokesperson Stella Stahl told LAist the item is on Wednesday's agenda.

In a statement, Raman said she expects to hold two meetings to discuss all the city’s options before the council makes a decision.

Raman and Mayor Karen Bass urged the county not to pull funding from LAHSA last spring, saying the agency was making progress on homelessness.

The supervisors went ahead last April with their decision to withdraw the more than $300 million in annual county funding from the agency.

The vast majority of county funds will be shifted from LAHSA starting July 1.

Raman recently announced she’s running in the June primary against Bass, whom she previously endorsed for re-election.

LAHSA is in ‘crisis,’ its CEO says

LAHSA was created by the city and county in 1993 to oversee homeless services. It’s governed by a CEO who reports to a commission of 10 members. Half of the members are appointed by the L.A. mayor, and the other half by each of the five county supervisors. Bass also serves on the commission, having appointed herself in fall 2023.

While it’s long faced criticism, it’s been under particularly close scrutiny for more than a year.

An audit and court-ordered review found it failed to properly track its spending and whether services were being provided.

LAHSA also has been facing criticism more recently for months-long delays in paying tens of millions of dollars to reimburse service providers — a problem officials vowed to fix nearly two years ago. Several providers recently told LAist they've had had to dip into reserves or take on debt.

While addressing the commission that oversees the organization on Friday, CEO O’Neill said LAHSA was “in crisis. And I say this not as a criticism to any of our really hardworking staff. They've built what they were asked to build.”

LAHSA’s staff report to “essentially 21 elected bosses, all of whom have different, sometimes conflicting agendas,” O’Neill said. “This creates a structure that is unstable.”

“LAHSA has been structured for decades as the entity that takes the blame,” she added. “Political incentive…has been to point at LAHSA rather than to address structural issues.”

“Morale is very low,” O’Neill said of LAHSA staff.