Kelly Fang/File

Power was fully restored to all buildings on the UC Berkeley campus as of Friday morning after a Sept. 30 explosion near California Hall damaged underground power lines and left 11 buildings unable to connect to the campus’s power grid.

Most of the 11 buildings without power were connected to portable generators rented by the campus in the days after the explosion and were reconnected to the main power grid between Tuesday night and early Friday morning. The process of switching from the backup generators to the campus power grid left those buildings without power for up to six hours, said Christine Shaff, communications director for the campus’s facilities services department.

“It was a fairly straightforward process,” Shaff said. “We did schedule the switch-over in coordination with the building occupants. I think everybody was anxious to be off of the generators.”

One student was hospitalized in the explosion, which forced a campuswide evacuation and caused the campus to declare a state of emergency. The explosion occurred after a power outage campus officials attributed to damage from theft of copper wiring at an off-campus electrical facility. Power was restored to all but 11 buildings on campus the next day.

Dwinelle Hall was brought back onto the campus power grid Tuesday night. Three locations that had been without power since the explosion — Edwards Track, the campus cogeneration plant and Environmental Health and Safety — were restored Wednesday.

California Hall, Durant Hall and the Bancroft and Doe libraries were connected to the power grid Wednesday night. Haas Pavilion, Dwinelle Annex and the Alumni House were connected by early Friday morning.

According to Shaff, the delay in restoration occurred because maintenance workers and a “high-voltage team” needed time to assess the damage from the explosion, remove damaged equipment and test power lines to make sure they were safe.

“It’s not just repairing the damage,” Shaff said. “It’s also understanding what we needed to do.”

On Oct. 1, maintenance crews removed a damaged switchboard at the site of the explosion. Switchboards allow crews to switch between two lines of the campus power grid. With the two-line system, power can be delivered to buildings when only one line is operational, allowing crews to conduct maintenance without disrupting the flow of power.

According to Skip Ray, an accounts manager at Peterson Power, the company leased seven generators of five different sizes to UC Berkeley, ranging from 150 to 800 kilowatts. Generators can cost between a “couple hundred” to a “few thousand” dollars a day, Ray said.

Except for pending repairs to the electrical vault from which the Sept. 30 explosion originated, the restoration of the campus power grid represents a return to normalcy after the incident. Shaff estimates the caution tape around the vault will remain for “a few days.”

Chris Yoder covers crime. Contact him at cyoder@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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An early-morning explosion in an underground high-voltage vault caused power to go out in buildings across campus Thursday.

Power returned to most buildings briefly after the outage around 8:15 a.m., with the exception of several buildings concentrated mainly in the northeastern section of campus, according Shaff.

As of 10:15 a.m., power had yet to be restored to those buildings, including Evans Hall and many of the engineering buildings, Shaff said. Members of the campus community reported outages in McLaughlin and Stanley halls.

“We’re not sure exactly what happened yet,” Shaff said. “But we’re bringing power back up building by building, which right now is the safest way to do it.”

Shaff said that restoring power to all campus buildings would take a couple of hours.

“I’m hoping they cancel classes,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Lewis Lehe, who was waiting outside McLaughlin Hall around 9:40 a.m.

Yet when Lehe walked upstairs to 203 McLaughlin, the classroom was apparently full.

Shaff had not heard reports about whether any classes had been cancelled due to the outage.

Updates to follow.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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Sureya Melkonian/Staff

Construction of the new Eshleman Hall will begin later this week as part of a plan to make Lower Sproul a hub of student life and activity.

A renovated Lower Sproul Plaza and rebuilt northwest stairway also are expected to reopen at the end of September, according to Christine Shaff, communications director for Facilities Services. The Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project remains on schedule to be completed by fall 2015 and is projected to cost $223 million.

According to Shaff, workers are excavating the Eshleman site, rebuilding the top surface of the plaza, retrofitting lighting in the Cesar Chavez Student Center and engaging in a focused demolition inside the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.

Because of the project, student organizations that were based in Eshleman Hall were relocated to Hearst Gym in August 2012.

“Now it’s a lot more organized and cleaner,” said Khanh Nguyen, co-operations chair of Southeast Asian Student Coalition. ”Eshleman was kind of falling apart. The transition wasn’t that difficult. They gave us a reasonable timeline and enough space.”

According to Briana Mullen, the ASUC’s Lower Sproul communications coordinator, the completed plaza will have student-group spaces and vendor spaces as well as restaurants, coffee shops and a meditation space. There will also be an open space for students who are not part of student organizations to enjoy the area.

Although some student groups already have been allocated future Lower Sproul spaces due to specific needs, the majority of student organizations have not been placed. The Office of ASUC Executive Vice President Nolan Pack will be responsible for selecting which student organizations will be able to move into the new Lower Sproul. Final decisions will not be made until next year.

Revenue for the ASUC has also been affected because vendors in the student union that usually pay rent to the ASUC are closed during the construction, Mullen said. However, part of the redevelopment project budget goes toward “revenue replacement.”

“$1.5 million a year is set aside for ASUC and ASUC Auxiliary,” Mullen said. “We are exploring other activities to increase services and new revenue options.”

Shaff and Mullen both said the demolition of Eshleman was one of the highlights of the project and was an important sign of progress.

“It was the first time students actually saw something happening,” Mullen said.

The B.E.A.R.S. Initiative, passed by the student body in spring 2010, was “the first huge milestone” in the project, Mullen said. The initiative instituted an escalating student fee, currently set at $35, to provide most of the project’s funding. The fee will continue until the 2046-47 academic year.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Classrooms in the affected areas were closed and emptied, but most of the building remained open.

Custodial staff members are cleaning up the flooding, and students will be allowed back into the areas by 5 p.m. today, according to Christine Shaff, director of communications for UC Berkeley’s Department of Facilities Services.

Shaff said that although there is ongoing construction in the affected bathroom, it is unrelated to the incident.

The flooding is unlikely to cause water damage, Shaff said.

Contact Madeleine Pauker at mpauker@dailycal.org.

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Sather Road

The major north-south corridor between Doe Library and California Hall will be closed for upgrades that will make the path level for handicap access. A small access path alongside California Hall is open to pedestrians.

Lower Sproul

The Lower Sproul Redevelopment project will close the footpath between Alumni House and Zellerbach Hall for the summer — preventing access to the Cesar Chavez Student Center and Zellerbach Hall from the west. The footpath is scheduled to reopen Sept. 1, Shaff said.

Oxford Street 

Work on the foundation of the new Berkeley Art Museum has closed one driving lane and a sidewalk on part of Oxford Street for the next three or four weeks. One lane of Center Street will be closed when the foundation work moves to the south side of the project.

Campbell Hall

Between the Campanile and LeConte Hall, Esplanade Drive will be closed for underground utility work associated with the Campbell Hall replacement. Campbell Hall construction is running on time, with the installation of the sixth and final floor last week, exterior work to the building is now fully under way. Campbell Hall is scheduled to open in late 2014.

Hertz Hall

Shaff also said that telecommunications fiber will be installed in front of Hertz Hall, possibly impeding pedestrian traffic between Hertz Hall, Morrison Hall, Kroeber Hall and the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library.

Below is the map that aggregates all current construction projects in the UC Berkeley campus.

View UC Berkeley construction projects in a larger map

Contact Chase at cschweitzer@dailycal.com

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Andrew Kuo/Senior Staff

An April inspection into the seismic safety levels of Units 1, 2 and 3 found four high-rise buildings in each residence hall complex to be below safety standards held by the University of California.

The buildings are rated between a IV and a V on the university’s scale for seismic safety, according to Christine Shaff, director of communications for UC Berkeley’s Facilities Services department. Those ratings imply a risk to life between “small” and “serious,” according to UC seismic safety policy.

Evaluations of the housing units in 1997 indicated that the high-rise buildings met the university’s standards. The goal of construction this summer, Shaff said, is to bring the residence halls to an acceptable rating of III.

Construction began on the high-rises — which do not include newer mini-suites — on May 19 and is scheduled to finish before fall residents begin to move in on Aug. 24. Exterior work, however, will continue through the fall semester.

The construction will cost $9.2 million for Unit 3, while Unit 1 and Unit 2 will each cost $8.8 million, according to Marty Takimoto, director of communications and marketing for the Residential and Student Service Programs, which oversees the residence halls. Only RSSP funds were used for the retrofitting.

“All our revenue comes from room and board and the rent students pay,” Takimoto said. “We use that revenue to fund projects like this, and we had this money in reserve.”

Takimoto said that the retrofitting is important in preserving the longevity of the buildings but that the seismic retrofit will also affect future plans to improve housing for students.

Some of these future plans include a major renovation of Unit 3, currently budgeted at $76.9 million for 2016-17, according to the University of California Capital Financial Plan for 2012-22. $23.1 million of the project is slated to come from auxiliary services like housing, according to the report.

“With this additional strengthening this summer, we will likely postpone any major renovation to Unit 3 for a while longer,” Takimoto said in an email.

After the inspection in April, plans were made to begin construction as soon as students moved out for the summer. Students were notified on April 30 that construction was planned, and fall 2013 residents were notified on May 29 that some exterior work will continue during the fall semester.

“We kind of lucked out,” Takimoto said. “We weren’t given an edict to do the construction right away — just as quickly as possible. We were able to make it happen quickly because there was time.”

The units have had seismic retrofitting before, which added cross bracing on the exterior of some buildings. High-rises in Units 1, 2 and 3 were each renovated between 1986 and 1996.

One of RSSP’s goals during construction has been to reduce the impact on residents, Takimoto said.

Students who would have otherwise used the units during the summer have already been reassigned to other residential halls on campus. Summer session students will live at Clark Kerr Campus, and CalSO students will stay in Bowles and Stern halls, Takimoto said.

Only the high-rise buildings are being retrofitted this summer. They include Cheney, Deutsch, Freeborn and Putnam halls in Unit 1; Cunningham, Davidson, Ehrman and Griffiths halls in Unit 2; and Ida Sproul, Norton, Priestley and Spens-Black Halls in Unit 3. The remaining halls, referred to as infill buildings, are newer and do not require retrofitting.

The seismic retrofitting project falls in line with the goals of UC Berkeley’s SAFER program, implemented in 1997 to address structurally unsafe buildings on campus. The high rises and Unit 3 were given a rating of “good” that same year, which is roughly equivalent to a III on the new UC scale.

Of the total square footage identified by SAFER as needing an upgrade, 60 percent has been completed or is in progress. Another 10 percent is scheduled to be strengthened by 2014.

Contact Jose Hernandez at jhernandez@dailycal.org.

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Henry Ascencio/Staff

In an effort to improve campus recycling, the university began phasing out concrete block trash cans in favor of newer, more ergonomic waste disposal bins this month.

The new bins align with the campus’s goal to reach zero waste by 2020, according to a statement from the Green Initiative Fund, a student-supported fund that helped finance the bins’ development.

A main reason for introducing the new bins is that emptying the old cement bins was a primary contributor to the $320,000 in workers’ compensation the campus spent from 2004 to 2009 for trash-lifting injuries, said Greg Ryan, an ergonomist with University Health Services.

“One of the goals of the project was to reduce the ergonomic strain on the body,” Ryan said.

Ryan explained that removing heavy trash liners from bins that open from the top puts strain on the shoulder and back due to the lifting involved.

The new bins, which are closed on top, are better at keeping out rain and pests, said Christine Shaff, communications director for UC Berkeley’s Facilities Services.

According to Shaff, the new bins are being manufactured locally by a company in Richmond and cost $875 each.

The bins are also designed to be interchangeable, said Michal Shuldman, a graduate student in the department of integrative biology who initiated the project as a member of the Graduate Assembly’s Sustainability Committee.

“The name plates and the openings (the different colors and shapes) can be changed out depending on what waste stream needs bins,” said Katherine Walsh, coordinator of the Green Initiative Fund, in an email.

The university intends to place compost bins in the future, but right now, the new bins around campus are for landfill, mixed paper, bottles and cans, Walsh said.

The current installment of bins follows a multiple-year development and implementation process.

“Lots of people played into the (development) process … it was a collaboration between graduate and undergraduate students … and many others,” Shuldman said.

Shuldman wrote a grant through the Green Initiative Fund for more outdoor trash bins on campus. At the same time, Theron Klos, the campus’s grounds operations manager, requested funds for new bins because of the health hazards associated with emptying cement bins, and the two decided to pool finances toward their common goal, Shuldman said.

Students from the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design created 3-D renderings of possible designs. After the mock-up stage, more than 10 prototypes were considered before settling on the final version, Ryan said.

New containers will be installed over the next three months, starting with areas near Upper Sproul Plaza, Dwinelle Hall, Wheeler Hall, Doe Library, Moffitt Library, California Hall and Memorial Glade, Walsh said in an email.

As a last step, Shuldman suggested an education project to ensure bins are used properly and the establishment of a “waste audit” to monitor improvement.

Contact Christine Tyler at ctyler@dailycal.org.

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At approximately 6 p.m., one of the campus’s high-voltage switch stations exploded near Anthony Hall, according to Christine Shaff, the communications director for UC Berkeley’s Department of Facilities Services. The station is a part of the electrical distribution system for the entire campus, she said.

“There wasn’t an actual outage, but there was a dip in power that did affect equipment all across campus,” Shaff said. “So some equipment did shut off because of that dip.”

It was originally thought that a power transformer on campus had exploded.

After the explosion, representatives from the Physical Plant – Campus Services, Berkeley Fire Department and officers from UCPD responded to the scene, according to UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada. There were no injuries reported, he said.

The cause of the explosion is currently unknown, as are the extent and cost of the damage. Shaff said equipment near the site of the explosion must be de-energized first before the campus conducts a thorough investigation of the incident.

“That’s scheduled to happen (on Friday), and the investigation will happen over the weekend,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any reason to be worried. The work that they will be doing for the investigation will not impact the power supply to campus.”

Last fall, the northeast part of campus temporarily experienced a power outage after an equipment malfunction during a routine switching procedure on the campus’s physical power plant.

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org.

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Katherine Chen/Staff

The Cal Student Store will close next Friday and temporarily move across the street to 2470 Bancroft Way due to ongoing construction on Lower Sproul Plaza.

The main student store will relocate from its current location in Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union and open on Feb. 19 across the street, next to Ned’s Berkeley Bookstore, as part of the Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project.

In preparation for textbook buyback season and summer sessions, a portion of the Cal Student Store is also slated to move into the building currently being occupied by Ned’s Bookstore, a space that the Cal Student Store will now use to keep its supply of rental, used, new and digital textbooks, according to a statement released Wednesday. This section will open in March.

Cal Student Store Director Amanda Reese said that the ASUC and ASUC Auxiliary have been in charge of informing students of the move via signs. However, some employees at Ned’s Bookstore became aware of the relocation only recently.

“We were told about one or two weeks ago,” said Ned’s Bookstore employee and UC Berkeley senior Carlos Zambrano. “No one really expected it. It was just really sudden. We had to take everything off the shelves because they’re moving in here.”

Once Ned’s Bookstore moves out of its Bancroft location, the Cal Student Store will be the only textbook retailer in the campus’s immediate proximity. The store’s parent company, Nebraska Book Company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2011; however, it is not confirmed whether this was the cause of its displacement.

Some students do not believe that the Cal Student Store’s move will be an inconvenience to customers due to its relatively close location.

“I don’t think it will be an inconvenience on students just because it’s so close to where it used to be,” said UC Berkeley freshman Kushal Ranjan.

Whether the move will affect the Cal Student Store’s staffing levels remains to be seen and will be assessed “based on business needs,” according to Reese.

When the Cal Student Store closes, the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union will be completely closed and fencing will surround the building to allow its renovation.

“I’m excited the work is moving ahead,” said Christine Shaff, communications director for UC Berkeley Facilities Services. “Once the bookstore is moved out, the MLK will be completely closed and be part of the construction site.”

The Cal Student Store’s move is part of the larger Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project, which is scheduled for completion in 2015. The project involves the renovation of Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Anthony Hall, Cesar Chavez Student Center, Zellerbach Hall and the complete demolition of Eshleman Hall.

Gladys Rosario covers academics and administration. Contact her at grosario@dailycal.org.

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Tony Zhou/Staff

While most of UC Berkeley was quiet over winter break, one area of campus, Lower Sproul Plaza, was bustling with activity.

As part of a $223 million redevelopment project of Lower Sproul, two buildings, the Cesar Chavez Student Center and Anthony Hall, underwent construction throughout the span of the break.

In the spring of 2010, students approved the B.E.A.R.S. Initiative Referendum, which included a student fee to pay for the project along with funding from the chancellor. It is scheduled to be completed in fall of 2015.

“It’s going to be frustrating to students right now, but the new buildings will provide such amazing places for students to collaborate and hang out,” said ASUC President Connor Landgraf. “It’s completely worth it to me.”

Construction of both Anthony Hall and the Cesar Chavez Student Center began last fall, continued throughout the break and will persist into the spring semester. Over the break, remodeling of bathrooms in Cesar Chavez took place along with the addition of new flooring and paint in classrooms.

Workers are currently removing asbestos and window glass from Anthony Hall and installing new flooring and landscaping. There are also plans for significant construction in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.

“Now’s the time when the real construction begins,” Landgraf said.

In preparation for this construction, the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union closed Pauley Ballroom, Tilden Room and restaurants in the building, according to an email from Landgraf. The Cal Student Store will be open until mid-February, when it will then be relocated next to Ned’s Berkeley Bookstore across the street. Alumnae Hall, located within the Anna Head complex between Crossroads Dining and Martinez Commons, will stand in as the venue for MLK Jr.

The next significant change will be to Eshleman Hall, Landgraf said.

Eshleman, which is also closed, will continue to be cleaned out until the end of January and is the only building that will be completely demolished this summer in order to meet earthquake retrofitting standards.

“The final review of the designs for Eshleman are happening,” said Christine Shaff, communications director for facility services. “It’s really again honing in on the details … We’re anticipating that next summer is going to be really busy.”

In addition to Eshleman’s demolition, Zellerbach Auditorium will be closed for the summer. Other changes include the new Career Center on Bancroft Way, closed sidewalks from Telegraph Avenue to Dana Street and the relocation of a bus stop on Bancroft near Eshleman to a block upward in front of Sproul Hall for routes F, 49, 51B and 52.

Briana Mullen, Lower Sproul communications coordinator, said she hopes the new buildings will reinvigorate student life and the more than 800 student organizations that use Lower Sproul.

“Students need space to organize,” Mullen said. “Whatever the purpose of the student group, they need this space in order to organize for their organization, whether it be social, service or academic.”

Gladys Rosario covers Academics and Administration. Contact her at grosario@dailycal.org.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article did not mention that the demolition of Eshleman Hall is scheduled to start in early April and will be completed in the summer.

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