Hancock Park Elementary also is built atop an oil field as is most of the Fairfax District. No L.A. Unified student has ever caught fire in a methane explosion at school. But in 1995 two students were killed in a traffic accident involving a bus. Moreover, new Belmont would have none of the carcinogenic asbestos that is widespread in older campuses, and it also would be built to modern earthquake-safety codes. Return to top.
Tests show that other schools aren t as contaminated as Belmont.
So Belmont should not be finished. Tests do not show any such thing. At Belmont, analysts performed extensive soil testing and found widespread methane and spot concentrations of hydrogen sulfide in the ground . At other schools, the vast bulk of testing has occurred inside the buildings by taking air samples. There is a plausible reason for this, though the upshot is test results that shouldn t be directly compared.