The State - News from May 18, 1988

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) said that about 8,000 of California’s 13,000 public school buses were built before 1977 and fail to meet federal safety standards for fuel tanks, like the bus that burst into flames after a collision Saturday in Kentucky, killing 27 people. Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, has been pressing for legislation that would provide $100 million from an oil company penalty fund to replace one-third of the older school buses. Since 1977, federal law has required school buses to have fuel tanks enclosed in crash-resistant steel cages and fuel lines made of metal rather than rubber. A Los Angeles Unified School District official said 225 of the district’s 1,530 buses were built before 1977. Their fuel tanks have been reinforced, but there was no room to install protective metal cages around them, said Ralph Jacobs, deputy branch director of the district’s transportation division.