Every time there’s a place in the country hit by a typhoon, a landslide, or an earthquake, a common post-calamity sight is school children having classes under a tree exposed to elements.
That situation would be minimized, if not completely eliminated, if the Department of Education’s new school building design would be built according to specifications.
VERA Files trustee and writer Yvonne Chua reported that DepEd will be building this year 30,000 calamity-resilient classrooms costing 60 per cent more than the ordinary classroom. Example: a complete one-story one-classroom building with basic features that is not calamity-resilient would cost P685, 000. The new, stronger design costs P1.1 million.
Chua said “To make each building more resilient to earthquakes, the DepEd is banking on a bigger footing or base and thicker beams and columns. It now requires a tie beam even for a single-story school. The horizontal beam connects several columns to make the structure stable.”