Warren Hall to be demolished. Will be streamed live!
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HAYWARD, Calif. (KGO) -- High atop an East Bay hill is a 13-story landmark -- and it's coming down this weekend. Warren Hall at Cal State East Bay could collapse in an earthquake and that's why its scheduled for an implosion on Saturday morning.
This weekend, the Warren Hall Administration Building will fall so that others may live. The event is so big that Cal State East Bay will be closed all weekend and when the building falls, the closest people will be around 1,400 feet away.
Crews spent all day Wednesday installing explosives for Saturday's sudden and crashing end to what some saw as an ivory tower and what others saw as an eyesore.
If you live in the neighborhoods below or saw it from the freeway, Warren Hall served as both a visual and an academic aid, but it was also the most seismically-unstable building in the entire California State University system -- a fact that makes the secondary purpose of this implosion a bit ironic.
When the building topples, scientists anticipate a shockwave equal to a 2.0 earthquake, hence the presence of the United States Geological Survey, which will place sensors in nearby neighborhoods and as far as 25 miles away.
Structural geologist Luther Strayer, Ph.D., identified this as an excellent opportunity to study the dangerous Hayward Fault, which passes just a few hundred feet away. He thought about this in terms of being able to schedule and monitor a small earthquake.
"Yeah, they happen all the time, but they don't happen when you want them to. This is an event that we know when it's going to happen. We know where it's going to happen exactly, therefore we can use the geometry," he said.
"I believe it's probably going to start the big one," one resident told ABC7 News.
That's not likely, but after Saturday's demise of Warren Hall, we may have a better idea of what to expect when the big one does hit. All it took was the demise of a local landmark.
ABC7 News will be streaming the implosion live on Saturday at 9 a.m.
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Why implosion?
Officials decided to blow up the building, instead of tearing it down slowly, to keep dust to a minimum.
"You have the same quantity of dust, but that dust is limited to a few minutes on a given day, with a known time, with proper planning so that same quantity of dust can be dealt with effectively," said Mark Liozeaux with Controlled Demolition Inc.
Geologists from the USGS were also busy Thursday afternoon placing 600 sensors around the East Bay to measure movement along the Hayward Fault.
The blast will have the same energy as a 2.0 quake.
I go to this school, so you can only imagine how we students feel about this. It's a good thing but a lot of memories (mainly dealing with Financial Aid and classes in here....) will definitely be brought back up. I am personally driving down to campus just for this event. I remember walking up several flights of stairs just because we could. It's the tallest building on campus and me and friends used to go in there just to use the microwave. We've burned popcorn in this building, damn near busted our ass just running to class, and taking elevators to taller floors just to see the view.
Man I will miss this building...
EDIT: VIDEOS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G37MOZzihBE
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=9209775&pid=9209745
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news...ition-saturday
Re: Warren Hall to be demolished. Will be streamed live!
Personally didn't feel the quake. Probably slept through it :v.
Re: Warren Hall to be demolished. Will be streamed live!
Explosions implosions are cool. I can dig it.
Re: Warren Hall to be demolished. Will be streamed live!
I know this is basically a spam comment but I initially read "harren hall to be demolished" :f6:
