Press Conference, UC Berkeley
October 24, 1997
By Robert M. Berdahl
Chancellor,
University of California, Berkeley
Thank you for coming here today. I want to tell you about a wide-ranging program I am initiating to intensify our long-standing efforts to improve the seismic safety of the Berkeley campus.
It is called the SAFER Program. That stands for Seismic Action plan for Facilities Renewal. It starts with an immediate high-level administrative restructuring. It commits us to a long-term strategic retrofitting program. And, it recognizes the need for us to raise $700 million, in today's dollars, to do the corrective work needed.
Resolving seismic structural deficiencies is an enormous task for any public institution. Certainly there are more exciting projects that I could initiate in my first few months as chancellor. But I see no other responsible course. I know it will be difficult. I know it will be costly. And I know it will take a long time, longer than my own tenure here. But as the chancellor of this campus, it is my duty to call upon this campus's talented professional staff and our eminent faculty experts to do everything we can to make this campus as safe an environment as is possible.
We live adjacent to the Hayward Fault. Our first responsibility is the protection of the lives of our students, our staff and our faculty.
There is also a second compelling reason to secure this campus in the event of a major earthquake. The fact of the matter is that UC Berkeley is a central economic driving force for California and the nation, and one of the country's most important educational and research institutions. If UC Berkeley were put out of business by an earthquake, recovery for the state and the region would be greatly hindered. The impact locally and nationally would be felt for years afterwards.
The Berkeley campus -- in fact the UC system as a whole -- has long done an excellent job in facing up to its seismic safety responsibility. Since the 1980s we have completed or are well underway with seismic improvements to 18 buildings at a cost of $250 million. All of our high-rise residence halls, for example, have been retrofitted.
But today we have new information -- information that tells us we have a great deal more work to do. A comprehensive report completed this summer for the first time gives us a clear and up-to-date assessment of our buildings. Recent earthquakes, including the Loma Prieta quake in the Bay Area, the Northridge quake in Southern California and Japan's Kobe quake have provided a wealth of new insight, including a new understanding of what happens to structures located very close to faults, as we are to the Hayward fault.
Most importantly, this report provides us with an exceptional tool to focus our efforts so that we can move ahead in the best, most effective way.
The SAFER Program and the seismic safety assessment are explained in detail in reports available to you here today. One thing you should notice. That is that we will undertake seismic work as one component -- albeit the largest -- of a coordinated planning, design and construction effort on this campus.
One of the first steps we are taking is to place this program and all capital development at the highest levels -- as the direct responsibility for a new Vice Chancellor for Capital Projects. As we undertake a search to fill this position, I have asked Vice Provost Nicholas Jewell to serve as interim vice chancellor. Nick as been leading the work on the latest seismic review and is well prepared to immediately step in.