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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I was stuck in an elevator in Barrows for 88 minutes — and then there was a fireball on campus.

It wasn’t as scary as it sounds, except for those two seconds in the elevator when I misunderstood the student worker who was helping us and thought she was informing us of the possibility that we may plummet to our deaths. Someone finally came to help us, and I acquired the skill of knowing how to open an out-of-order elevator door. I jumped onto the fourth floor, finally leaving that box that constituted our world for 88 minutes (not to be dramatic or anything), and soon after I left the building, I got a call from a friend telling me to get as far away from campus as possible, right away, because there had just been an explosion near California Hall.

You know this by now. The news is all over the Internet. Within hours, a page popped up on my Facebook suggesting I buy a shirt that said, “I Survived Explosive Midterms — Cal 2013.” There are memes and pictures showing how studious we Berkeley students are; my favorite is the image of a sea of students’ faces in a dark classroom, half illuminated by their iPhone screens, scribbling away, completely unaware of the chaos that was about to break out around them.

I was heading down Bancroft when I got the call, and the panic in his voice made me turn to my right. The big gray cloud that from afar I thought was fog turned out to be smoke from the fire that had just erupted. I got to Telegraph and Durant and watched the masses of students anxiously walking or sprinting across the street, everyone glancing back at the disarray behind. The sirens occupied the surrounding air with their shrieks as the campus blinked with the fire trucks’ lights. A general sense of panic seemed to be spreading throughout Sproul Plaza.

My friends came out, and we stared at the smoky sky, wondering whether we would have class tomorrow (of course we did) and whether this meant any deadlines we had would be pushed (of course they weren’t). As I looked up at the Berkeley sky, I had a flashback: It’s July, and I’m standing right outside the Syrian border, staring up at the half-Turkish, half-Syrian sky. I am listening to a man tell me about the rumor going around that said that the camp we worked at will be bombed soon. “So keep looking up at the sky like you do, and run away from explosions, OK?”

I nod yes and keep my eyes glued on my beloved country’s clear blue sky, decorated with wispy white streaks. I wondered what my reaction would be if I saw a plane approaching: Would I freeze, or would I shout and start running? And then I thought, would running even help me? A feeling of helplessness slowly trickled throughout my body and gradually took over. My brain seemed to place me in someone else’s shoes, subjected me to someone else’s emotions, someone who is watching a bomb fall down on her country, her city, her house, herself.

It is painful, knowing thousands have had to answer the question of whether running is beneficial. It is even more painful knowing those people and I shared the same nationality, the same land.

I stood on that corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, watching students rush toward my side of the street, and thought, this is a small glimpse of what it must be like to be in my country. My friend, commenting on the excitement of the day and explaining why he so desperately needed a drink, said, “An explosion. That doesn’t happen every day.”

But it does. It is happening every day. And it’s not because wiring was stolen but because people are purposefully dropping bombs on others. And it really is horrible that some of our fellow Berkeley students were hurt, and all of our prayers are going out to them. But I want to point out that my fellow citizens are not only hurt but are dying, on a daily basis. In their homes, their schools, everywhere.

The explosion in Berkeley reminded me — not that I needed a reminder — of what drives me to be here, the reason I listen to professors talk about human rights and conflict-management strategies. Everyday life in Berkeley, whether it’s another normal day or a huge-fireball-on-campus kind of day, speaks of Syria to me.

It’s as Walt Whitman said,

“I was looking a long while for Intentions,

For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these

chants — and now I have found it,

It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither

accept nor reject,)

It is no more in the legends than in all else,

It is in the present — it is this earth to-day.”

The post An explosion here and bombs there appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Michael Drummond/Senior Staff

UC Berkeley received national media attention Monday night following a bizarre series of events that culminated with an explosion near California Hall and the swift evacuation of campus.

By midnight, the campus was eerily dark, empty except for the flashing lights of fire engines and the haze of lingering smoke.

A series of innocuous disruptions

It began with a campuswide power outage at 4:30 p.m.

Students in Doe Memorial Library, who were evacuated when the lights shut off and fire alarms were triggered, were surprised to find that students in Moffitt Library and other buildings were experiencing similar confusion.

“I figured I’d get in some last-minute cramming (when) all of the buzzers and fire alarms in the North Reading Room went off,” said Max Morton, a campus sophomore. “Everyone was looking around, clearly really confused. Then I headed over to Moffitt, and everyone’s pouring out of there too.”

Within 15 minutes, both UCPD and Berkeley Fire Department were responding to reports of black smoke at locations across campus. According to Acting Deputy Fire Chief Avery Webb, firefighters at Koshland Hall discovered a plume of smoke coming from a backup generator.

That was when the calls started pouring in, Webb said. BFD dispatchers, hearing reports of smoke clouds, strange odors and people trapped in elevators campuswide, quickly passed word on to crews across the city.

“The system was on the verge of being overwhelmed by calls coming in from different places,” Webb said.

By 5:15 p.m., Berkeley Fire Department was so overwhelmed with calls that officials requested crews from Alameda County Fire Department to cover duties at fire stations in the city, Webb said.

Meanwhile, a similar spectacle developed outside Sather Tower in response to the release of smoke from another underground generator. One of the backup generators, which automatically starts in the event of a widespread power outage, was running and emitting smoke, which is typical of the system, said UCPD officer Barry Boersma. UCPD, along with Berkeley Police Department and BFD, was present at the scene.

About 5:20 p.m., firefighters evacuated Latimer Hall after students and faculty smelled ammonia in the building. According to Webb, the chemical escaped into the building when a laboratory circulation fan shut down after the power outage, but concentrations were never high enough to cause serious harm.

“A small amount of ammonia can produce a large amount of odor,” Webb said. “Most of what was being done was precautionary.”

As responders began to stem the tide of stuck elevators, a lull in the action emerged about 6 p.m.

“It looked like things were winding down,” Webb said.

The big bang

About 6:40 p.m., the lull ended.

Officials at their makeshift command post on the west side of the Campanile turned abruptly at the sound of a large explosion originating from an electrical vault just downhill, according to UCPD Lt. Marc DeCoulode.

Campus sophomore Jennifer Han was walking past Wheeler Hall on her way home from a midterm review session when the explosion sent her and other students sprinting in the opposite direction.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘What the heck is going on?’ ” Han said. “I initially thought it was a bomb and just wanted to run away. As I was leaving, someone was yelling through a megaphone, but everyone kept walking towards the area.”

A fire engine waiting to respond to another call was parked just 30 to 40 feet away from the explosion, DeCoulode said. Four people sustained minor injuries from the blast, one of whom was taken to the hospital to be treated for minor burn injuries.

At the command post, DeCoulode and other leaders made a quick decision to evacuate the campus. A number of similar electrical vaults are spread across campus, and first responders were worried they would burst as well, he said.

Officers spent the rest of the night checking buildings for malfunctioning elevators and other problems, DeCoulode said.

The aftermath

UC Berkeley will now begin investigating the events that led up to the power outage and explosion, said campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.

Authorities determined early on that the power outage was caused by damage from vandals attempting to steal copper ground wiring in a manhole a half-mile east of campus. Whether this is also related to the explosion is still unknown, Mogulof said.

An entry from the UCPD crime log shows a burglary of copper wire and other ground wires was reported on Sept. 17 at the Big C Trail.

UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada confirmed that this burglary is the incident officials believe is related to the outage and said that high-voltage wire was stolen.

Mogulof said the vandals had a sophisticated understanding of what they were doing due to their ability to locate the access point and the amount of pressure they were able to apply to the wiring.

“These are people who understand their illicit business and know where the access or weak points are of any electrical grid,” Mogulof said.

Another explosion occurred nearly three weeks ago in an underground high-voltage vault, causing a power outage in several buildings. At the time, officials said that the explosion, located near Evans Hall, was a result of construction. Mogulof said the campus has no reason to believe the two incidents are related.

However, the campus is “open to the possibility that there might be something systemic,” Mogulof said. “Just because that’s what we assessed at the time doesn’t mean we’re going to stick to that.”

Chase Schweitzer contributed to this report.

Contact Adrianna Dinolfo and Connor Grubaugh at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

The post Explosion, evacuation prompt inquiry into day’s events appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Carli Baker/Senior Staff

UPDATED 4:33 p.m. — Although power has been restored to most of UC Berkeley after an explosion and a subsequent campuswide evacuation, 11 buildings remain without power as of Tuesday afternoon.

Students should assume classes held in those buildings are canceled, according to a statement released by UC Berkeley. According to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof, 113 classes were canceled today.

The nonoperational buildings include Alumni House, Bancroft Library, California Hall, Central Heating Plant, Doe Library, Durant Hall, Dwinelle Hall, Dwinelle Annex, Edwards Track (East and West areas), Haas Pavilion and the Office of Environment, Health & Safety facility.

Backup generators are being installed at Dwinelle Hall, Bancroft Library, Doe Library and California Hall, Mogulof said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. The other seven buildings will remain off the campus grid until the campus has fully assessed the damage.

“We don’t want to reconnect it for fear that we may bring everything else crashing down again,” he said.

At an earlier press conference Monday, Mogulof reiterated that the power outage that occurred at 4:30 p.m. was caused by damage to cables caused by vandals who were attempting to steal copper crucial to the campus’s power system. However, he said whether this damage was the direct cause of the explosion is still being determined.

Mogulof called the damage to the wiring “extensive” and said it was much worse than officials had initially believed when discovered late last week.

He also said that the explosion, which occurred just outside California Hall about 6:40 p.m., happened when the team was bringing power back to campus.

The campus is taking steps to increase the security of the copper substation where the vandals damaged the wiring, Mogulof said. He added that the facility is within half-mile to a mile radius of the explosion.

“It was unprecedented,” Mogulof said. ”There wasn’t anything to suggest that we had that sort of vulnerability. We’re in a new world here where people are stealing copper out of the university’s electrical grid. We have to adapt to what the new normal looks like.”

Mogulof said that the robbers had a “highly sophisticated” understanding of where one could access the sort of copper found in the substation.

The vandals “chose a point that was secluded, that was not visible, that wasn’t regularly visited,” he said.

Officials assured members of the community it was safe to return to campus Tuesday morning in an email from Chancellor Nicholas Dirks. The email said that power to the majority of the campus buildings was restored Monday night using a “methodical approach to ensure that each building is safe to occupy.”

“Because of this method of restoration, the campus has a high level of confidence that the campus is safe,” the message said.

Mogulof said that the restoration is not a “one-stop deal” and that the campus will continue to monitor the situation.

ASUC President DeeJay Pepito posted a statement on Facebook acknowledging unease over the fact that most classes are still in session despite concerns for students’ mental and emotional well-being.

“Several people were injured from the explosion, many students were stuck in elevators for hours, campus libraries were closed, and several of the residence halls … were impacted by the power outage, all factors that produced a chaotic and stressful environment,” she said in the statement. “The uncertainties of safety made studying extremely difficult and the expectation from our University to resume with regular activity and retain properly under such unique high stress and anxiety is unacceptable.”

Pepito noted that she has been in contact with the UC Berkeley administration this morning and has asked Associate Dean of Students David Surratt to send psychologists from the Tang Center to the residence halls.

Students should check in with their academic departments for further information about classes and rescheduling, and employees who normally work in those buildings should check in with their supervisors about reporting to work, according to the statement from the campus.

UC Berkeley professor of economics Martha Olney said that while the building closures were an inconvenience, the campus did an efficient job of making alternate plans.

“I thought the classroom scheduling office was on top of things,” she said. “I appreciated their quick service, and this is good preparation for the (next) earthquake.”

Here is a Google Map pinpointing where the non-operational buildings are located:

View this map on Google Maps.

Adrianna Dinolfo and Lydia Tuan contributed to this report.
Sara Grossman is the executive news editor. Contact her at sgrossman@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @saragrossman.

The post Most power on campus back to normal; some buildings remain without power appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kelly Fang/Senior Staff

Check out our photo gallery of the explosion here.

An explosion on the UC Berkeley campus near California Hall injured several people, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency and order an evacuation of the campus about 6:40 p.m. Monday evening.

Three people were treated on scene for injuries, and one was transported to a hospital with minor burn injuries, according to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof. At least 20 people were stuck in elevators as a result of an earlier power outage but were freed by 9 p.m., Mogulof said.

The explosion appears to be related to vandalism discovered by the campus late last week, Mogulof said. Vandals were stealing or attempting to steal copper grounding wire from an electrical system not readily visible, and the damage appears to be more extensive than initially believed. The explosion occurred as engineers were restoring power after a campuswide outage about 4:45 p.m., Mogulof said.

The explosion originated in an underground vault beneath a road by California Hall near the center of campus, said UCPD Sgt. Andrew Tucker.

“At first, I was really scared because I thought the explosion was big enough to produce a shock wave,” said sophomore Jennifer Han, who was walking home from a midterm when the explosion happened. “You heard it first, and then there were flames.”

At least four ambulances, fire trucks and multiple police units responded to the incident.

An ammonia leak in Latimer Hall, likely related to the power failure, was contained by Berkeley Fire Department about 6:20 p.m., said UCPD Lt. Marc DeCoulode.

Daily Cal multimedia producer Miles Mathews captured the billowing fire after an explosion on the UC Berkeley campus.

After the explosion, officials instructed everyone to evacuate the campus through the north and west entrances. They also advised people to stay away from manholes on campus.

At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, campus officials announced that power had been restored to most buildings on campus and that most classes will meet as scheduled. Eleven buildings remain without power and are not operational: Alumni House, Bancroft Library, California Hall, Central Heating Plant, Doe Library, Durant Hall, Dwinelle Hall, Dwinelle Annex, Edwards Track (East and West areas), Haas Pavillion and EH&S Facility, according to the UC Berkeley public affairs website.

Students should assume classes are cancelled in these buildings for the day and should check in with departments to see if and when classes and events will be rescheduled, and employees in these buildings should check in with supervisors about reporting to work, the website said.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Mogulof said at a press conference Monday night. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Daily Californian online managing editor Seung Y. Lee took video footage of a plume of smoke erupting from campus as the explosion took place near Wheeler Hall.

Freshman Henry Rowswell described the explosion as a “fireball” that was as tall as California Hall.

Martina Baccari, a Berkeley High School student who was on campus at the time of the incident, said she felt heat in her face directly after the explosion.

Shortly after the power outage, smoke was seen rising from an old power generator near Bancroft Library that kicked in when power went out, said UCPD officer Barry Boersma. It is unclear whether the two incidents are related.

At 6:05 p.m., the campus sent out an alert through its emergency text message system canceling classes and shutting down lab operations for the rest of the day.

The outage affected buildings from Strawberry Canyon to University Hall, including the chancellor’s residence, said Christine Shaff, communications director for Facilities Services. Student housing Units 1, 2 and 3, Maximino Martinez Commons and Foothill also were affected.

The residence halls affected by the outage were being powered by generators Monday evening, Mogulof said. Although parts of buildings remained without power, students were still allowed in, he said.

The outage also affected Cal Dining services Monday evening. Foothill and Crossroads will remain open with limited service, but Cafe 3 and Clark Kerr Campus dining commons will be unaffected, according to the Cal Dining Facebook page.

“We got very, very lucky that there were no serious injuries,” Mogulof said.

UC Berkeley senior Ana Reyes took video footage of the explosion.

Staff writers Adrianna Dinolfo, Chloe Hunt and Chris Yoder contributed to this report. Executive News Editor Sara Grossman also contributed to this story.

Megan Messerly and Jeremy Gordon are news editors. Contact them at newsdesk@dailycal.org and follow the Daily Cal twitter page at @dailycal.

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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.

The post Electrical explosion causes brief power dip on campus Wednesday appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At around 6 p.m., a transformer exploded and left a number of buildings on the south side of campus without power.

“There’s a little bit of power outage, but no one’s been injured,” said UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada. “Authorities are on the scene and looking into it. Hopefully, they will have the power back on as soon as possible.”

It is unknown what caused the transformer to explode or how long the power will remain out, according to Tejada.

During fall 2012, 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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