The Daily Cal reports that power went out on the U Cal Berkeley campus at 4:45 p.m. local time on 30 September 2013, and that subsequently an explosion on campus at about 6:40 p.m. injured an unknown number of people. The report includes a striking photo of a manhole on fire. The campus has been evacuated.
The Berkeley scanner has live audio from the area; at this writing, there were over 140 people monitoring it.
Parts of the UC Berkeley computer systems are down. The UC Berkeley News Center reports this –
Update 7:27 p.m. The power outage and explosion were due to a power system failure. All are asked to leave the main campus area immediately. For updates call 800-705-9998.
The campus is experiencing a power outage. All classes this evening are cancelled. Lab operations should be safely shut down and people should leave the building. At this time, most major IT services (bspace, bconnected, etc.) are offline. When power returns, these systems will gradually come online. More information will be posted at this location. For ongoing updates, please call 1-800-705-9998 throughout the evening.
This short video by student Ana Reyes shows the scene of the explosion.
For current updates and more details, follow @dailycal.
Other news sources:
LA Times says “one person was taken to a hospital”, quoting an unnamed university spokesman. SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle) names the spokesman as Dan Mogulof, and refers to the injuries as “minor”.
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