The May 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan province of China, in which apartment buildings stood undamaged next to destroyed school buildings, is a terrifying example of how poorly many schools are built: Almost 7,000 schools collapsed, by some reports killing 10,000 children. (The Chinese government has refused to release an official number.) Heartbreaking images flew around the world on CNN International: students perched on tipping slabs, waving to show rescuers where classmates were buried; parents, weeping and frantic, clawing at the rubble.
Soon afterward, the Earth Institute at Columbia University calculated how many U.S. children might be at risk for a similar disaster and found that 4.2 million attend school in earthquake zones throughout the nation. In 2007, Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries released a report that examined 3,300 education and other public buildings, and deemed 1,300 of them to have a “high to very high” probability of structural failure in a quake. These statistics infuriate Petal. “Schools should be safe,” she says, unequivocally. “We should notput kids’ lives at risk to educate them.”
Petal is a child of two earthquake zones. She was born in California and spent some formative years in Japan, so she learned to “drop, cover and hold” (the standard earthquake instruction) as a routine part of her school day. When she was eight, the 1964 Niigata quake struck 100 miles from her house in Tokyo. Petal tried to run upstairs to bring her baby brother to safety, but she couldn’t reach him because the steps wereshaking too much. (He was unhurt.) When the 1994 Northridge earthquake hit northwestern Los Angeles, she was there with her husband and daughter. They all jumped out of bed and rode out the temblor clinging to doorframes. Petal’s family came out of it unharmed, but she acquired a deep respect for the unpredictability and brute force of quakes.
Petal has always had an interest in helping children. Starting in the early 1990s, she worked as a private practice consultant for disabled kids and their parents, helping them claim hard-to-access government services; additionally, she worked as a child abuse prevention specialist. She excelled: In 1994, the California Department of Social Services gave her an award for exceptional commitment to the children of Los Angeles. “I learned to listen to everyone’s experiences,” she says, looking back on those years. “I took great pleasure in it.”
.jpg)
.JPG)
