A large explosion at UC Berkeley could have been fatal, as students and teachers rushed to find cover. People were also reportedly stuck between floors in elevators during the power outage which followed.
Four people were injured in the explosion but only suffered from minor burns. It is thought that the UC Berkeley explosion was caused by copper wire thieves who stole the copper wire from an electrical station situated just outside the campus.
One of the students on campus at the time of the blast, Jay Reddy, said: “It was dark. It was pretty scary. We just wanted to get out of there.”
He said that due to the power cut the students had to find a way out of the building: “We had to figure out how to get out of the building.” The explosion happened at around 6:30 pm, about two hours after the first power outage.
Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for UC Berkeley said: “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 told reporters that the force of the blast caused a manhole to shoot into the air and that it also caused an ammonia leak . He spoke more about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the explosion:
“Something happened here that surprised the experts.Somebody attacked our system. Somebody stole key parts of our system,” he said. Power was restored to the campus soon after the explosion. Mogulof spoke about the importance of continuing with business as usual on the campus:
“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.”
