14 DAY TRIAL // An explosion reported on the UC Berkeley campus has resulted in one person suffering minor burns, reports say.
Students have been evacuated on Monday evening following a power outage followed by the blast.
The explosion was heard at 6:30 p.m., in a utility vault outside California Hall. Two hours before, a power outage took place.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof tells the Los Angeles Times that the outage has most likely been caused by a copper wire theft.
“It was dark. It was pretty scary. We just wanted to get out of there,” described sophomore Jesse Kay, who had left the weight room just before the power outage.
Twenty students were stuck in elevators while the lights were out, but none of them was injured.
The incident had prompted the need for wire replacement in certain areas. Mogulof believes that, although the problem has been fixed locally, it has caused issues in other areas of the electric system.
“We have a strong suspicion that what happened is related to vandalism discovered last week. [...] The damage they caused may have been far more extensive than we originally thought,” he says.
“Something happened here that surprised the experts. [...] Somebody attacked our system. Somebody stole key parts of our system,” he adds.
The blast took place while works on the electric system were being performed. It has left residence halls darkened and caused an ammonia leak, which was taken care of. An investigation is underway as to the extent of the damage caused by the copper wire theft.
“We are waiting, checking, testing. It's a huge campus so it's going to take a while. Obviously our top priority is to continue providing academic activity on the campus, but that's not going to trump life safety,” Mogulof details.