Campus preparing for limited power this weekend
1:12 p.m. update: PG&E has informed administrators that it plans to disconnect the power supply to campus Saturday evening. Expect the next update later this afternoon.
October 25, 2019
For the latest information, please visit the Berkeley News homepage.
Marc Fisher, UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for administration, and Alicia Johnson, director of emergency management, issued the following message Friday morning:
We are writing to let you know that PG&E has informed us of plans to disconnect the power supply to our campus, beginning Saturday evening, October 26.
Additional resources
Information for students, researchers and Berkeley residents can be found at the bottom of this post.
Because we will rely on a limited power supply from our co-generation plant (as we did during the recent power outage), we ask that everyone avoids campus for the duration of the outage. Our priorities during these outages are life safety, maintaining the power supply to student residence halls and dining facilities, and our research enterprise.
Power will be maintained to the student residence halls and dining facilities. However, we ask that research and other activities be extremely restricted for the duration of the outage. We ask that entrance to buildings be limited to only those whose presence is critical to lab operations (such as topping off cryogens in storage units or transferring cells to fresh media, etc.). If everyone avoids campus as instructed, our limited power supply from the co-generation plant and back-up generators will be able to keep critical research operations (e.g., freezers, etc.) functioning.
We anticipate being able to proceed with select events on Saturday and Sunday: athletics events will be held as scheduled, as will performances at Zellerbach Auditorium. Other events planned by student organizations that are to be held in campus buildings will likely need to be canceled. We will confirm these plans in our afternoon message.
Please refer to Berkeley News for any updates and be sure to subscribe to WarnMe alerts. We will provide an additional update this afternoon.
We are also watching air quality reports and will send separate Cal Messages if air quality declines to a level that warrants additional campus actions, as discussed in the Cal Message earlier this week.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Additional resources
- How to prepare your home for power loss or fire.
- Suggestions for getting through a power shutoff.
- Information for Berkeley residents from city leaders.
- Updates for students on residence halls, dining commons and the Tang Center.
- What limited power means for researchers, lab managers.
- What will happen to AirBears, email and other IT systems during an outage?
- Information on parking and transit during the PG&E power loss.
- Follow @UCBerkeley on Twitter for the latest updates.