Watch 13-Story Cal State East Bay Building Topple
- August 19, 2013
By Charles Burress
Patch.com
The signature building of the Cal State East Bay campus in Hayward – 13-story Warren Hall – toppled and collapsed in a quick, dramatic implosion this morning, Saturday, to the delight of excited onlookers.
The 42-year-old structure perched prominently on a hill overlooking Hayward was determined to be seismically unsafe because of its proximity to the Hayward Fault. It had been deemed by the California State University Seismic Review Board as the most seismically vulnerable building in the CSU system, according to campus officials.
So about 9 a.m. today, it was brought down by 1,100 detonation charges containing 463 pounds of explosive material.
Geologists from U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the univeristy and citizen volunteers, put hundreds of seismometers near Warren Hall to help map the area's geology.
The building, which opened in 1971, housed administrative offices and classrooms for what was then called Cal State Hayward.