Students learn to drop, cover and hold on during earthquake drills and with a bit of luck none of the Newberg School District buildings should fall on their heads if a real one comes. The last major earthquake in the Newberg area was a 5.0 tremor in March 1993 dubbed the Spring Break Quake.

While that quake damaged some buildings and forced the temporary closure of the Dundee Elementary School gym, the passage of a bond that same year paid for seismic upgrades to existing buildings. Newer buildings have been erected to meet current building code regulations regarding earthquakes.

The district office is a case of the former. Housed in a 1911 masonry building that was first used as a high school, the district office now sports a steel frame that was installed to prevent the building from collapsing in case of an earthquake.

“You can actually see the struts,” said maintenance and grounds supervisor Waide Bailey, who has been working for the district for 18 years. The frame is made of vertical steel beams anchored in the basement and rising to the roof and horizontal beams spanning the width of the structure. Most noticeable in some offices are the cross beams that reinforce the steel structure itself. There are also “steel strappings to keep walls from falling away from the floors,” he said.

All the older schools “have been remodeled and earthquake-proofed,” Bailey said, although in the buildings occupied by students “most of it is invisible now that the sheet rock is covering it.” As for the maintenance buildings themselves, Bailey said they’re made of steel — “it’s all screws and bolts,” he said — and as such they’re naturally resistant to tremors.

It’s not only falling buildings that cause injuries in earthquakes, but hung ceilings and lights fixtures. All those are now screwed into the real ceilings “so that they won’t fall down on the kids,” he said.