Earthquake Drill

The teacher's pencil tapped. Like a colony of frightened prairie dogs, 40 or 50 moppets bobbed under their desks, opened big flat geography books over their heads. Teacher marched to the door, counted up to 40. Then "earthquake drill" was over.

That extraordinary performance might have been seen in almost any Berkeley, Calif, public schoolroom last week. It was no joke to Berkeley citizens. After last year's Long Beach disaster a state survey commission found 19 of Berkeley's 21 schoolhouses wholly or partly unsafe.

Out of buildings totally condemned the Board moved 3,000 children. To house them it pitched $50,000 worth of big tents. Safe schools now run double shifts and all of Berkeley's 30,000 schoolchildren are on part time. Next week a committee of architects and engineers is to present a rebuilding program which the Board estimates will cost $4,000,000. It has applied to the Public Works Administration for 30% of this expenditure, expects to float a bond issue for the rest.

Meantime outraged Berkeley citizens have been meeting weekly in Citizens, Voters, Taxpayers and Economy Leagues to howl protest. Parents complain that their homes are upset by irregular school hours, that hygiene in tent-schools is bad, that the earthquake phobia is worse than earthquake.

But Berkeley's Board, firm in its own convictions, last week had plenty of outside support. With 18 schools closed, San Francisco had 18,200 pupils on halftime. Oakland was looking over its buildings. Los Angeles had found 275 buildings unsafe, pitched many a tent. A Permanent Committee on Earthquake Protection was at work under famed Physicist Robert Andrews Millikan. And University of California's Seismology Professor Perry Byerly declared: "It would be advisable if every city in California were as much concerned as Berkeley."

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