Campus & community, Campus news

Berkeley leaders to campus community: As power is restored, thank you

By Public Affairs

Three of UC Berkeley’s top leaders, Chancellor Carol Christ, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos and Vice Chancellor, Administration, Marc Fisher, issued the following message Friday afternoon:

Dear faculty, staff and students,

This week’s PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff was a real-time test of UC Berkeley’s emergency preparedness and response capabilities. While we learned many lessons that will help us improve, overall we are encouraged by how the campus responded and proud of the way in which so many across our large and diverse community pulled together to support one another, the Berkeley campus and its core operations.

We are grateful to everyone in our community for their patience and support as we did our best to navigate what was an unprecedented situation with limited information. Specifically, we would like to express our gratitude to particular groups – many who worked around the clock – whose actions helped manage this challenging situation across our complex institution:

  • Everyone in Facilities Services for working to prepare campus for a mid-semester partial closure and executing contingency plans to minimize disruption
  • Building managers, Building/Emergency Management Area Coordinators and departmental teams across the campus who worked to secure critical research infrastructure and buildings
  • College, department, unit and administrative leadership and managers , who helped communicate to students, researchers and staff, and coordinate rapid responses to ensure research continuity
  • UCPD and Community Service Officers who secured the campus and kept our community safe
  • Student volunteers from the Berkeley Disaster Team and Berkeley Medical Reserve Corps for augmenting campus response capabilities
  • The ICON launch team at Space Sciences Laboratory , and the Facilities Services team dedicated to their support, who successfully launched a NASA satellite in the midst of a regional power outage
  • The staff of RSSP – especially housing and dining operations and Residential Life – for their efforts, including contingency planning, to keep students in our housing units safe and informed
  • University Health Services for providing continuing services to keep our students safe, healthy, and supported
  • Disabled Students’ Program, Disability Compliance, and Student Union leadership for organizing to support our students with disabilities
  • Principal investigators and their teams for responding with little notice to protect vital research
  • Our colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco who helped to preserve critical samples and reagents from some of our laboratories
  • Environment, Health & Safety for ensuring life-safety of the campus
  • Office of Laboratory Animal Care for ensuring that our research animals were well protected and cared for
  • Communications & Public Affairs for crafting and deploying clear communications as quickly as possible, through multiple channels, to keep campus informed of breaking news
  • The Voice and Data network staff, data center team and many other key IT staff who kept core technologies and systems up and running
  • Educational Technology & Services staff who worked to ensure that our classrooms would be ready for classes when power was restored
  • KALX Radio staff who continued to operate throughout the emergency, providing updates and music to the community
  • Student Affairs’ communications team for keeping staff and students informed
  • Intercollegiate Athletics staff and coaches for moving athletic competitions to off-site venues and adjusting all practices and student-athlete support services to outdoor locations and off-site facilities
  • The members of the Crisis Management Team , made up of senior campus leaders, who evaluated limited and evolving information to respond in the best interests of the university
  • Members of the Emergency Operations Center who interpreted the latest information to keep campus units and decision makers informed
  • Our state and local partners who supported our campus actions with information and offers of support
  • The multitude of other individuals and units whose efforts helped us to achieve a necessary reduction in energy usage

Pending any unforeseen developments, normal weekend operations will resume on Saturday and Sunday. Normal weekday operations will resume starting on Monday, October 14. We will be in touch shortly as decisions are made regarding how best to make up for instructional time that was postponed this week.

As always, we issue one final reminder to update your WarnMe contact information and follow Berkeley News for the latest campus news.

Thank you to everyone in our campus community whose response to this week’s events reminds us what a truly special place Berkeley is.

Fiat Lux!

Carol Christ
Chancellor

Paul Alivisatos
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Marc Fisher
Vice Chancellor, Administration