Campus & community, Campus news

Midday power failure darkens areas of Berkeley near campus

By Steve McConnell

An extensive PG&E power failure late Tuesday morning knocked out electrical power to parts of the city of Berkeley surrounding UC Berkeley. Power fed directly from the campus was unaffected by the outage, according to Christine Shaff, Facilities Services spokesperson.

Power to most buildings and traffic signals in downtown Berkeley was restored by 2 p.m.

According to the PG&E website, at least 10 outages, initially reported shortly before noon, affected more than 5,000 customers in Berkeley. The cause remained unknown.

Shaff said the campus Physical Plant office had received calls from UC Berkeley staff in buildings to the north, west and south of campus, as well as from Clark Kerr Campus, reporting that they were without power. However, power was still on in buildings that get their electricity directly from the campus, including the Tang Center and many of the large Southside residence halls.

An email from UCPD said no public safety issues related to the blackout had been reported. Police said the following UC Berkeley locations lost power during the outage:

  • Clark Kerr Campus
  • Unit 3 residence hall
  • Smyth-Fernwald residence hall
  • Jones Child Care Center
  • 2339 Haste Street
  • 2223 Fulton Street
  • 2111 Bancroft Way
  • Cleary Hall
  • Ida-Jackson apartments
  • Goldman School of Public Policy
  • 1925 Walnut Street

BART directed trains to pass through the Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley BART stations without stopping during the PG&E outage. Service was restored at those stations around 1 p.m., though residual delays were expected to continue on the Richmond line.