BERKELEY, CA \u2014 Above ground, UC Berkeley’s campus has green trees, historic buildings, the towering Campanile, and vast views of the Bay Area. <\/p>\n
But next to the campus, underneath California Memorial Stadium, there’s an environment much more volatile and unnerving for some \u2014 the Hayward Fault. <\/p>\n
Over the years, UC Berkeley officials have spent billions to mitigate<\/a> the risks of the fault line. <\/p>\n California Memorial Stadium was almost completely retrofitted with scientific devices such as seismic dusters, which act as shock absorbers during an earthquake. <\/p>\n The UC Berkeley Grimes Engineering Building is also one that has been constructed specifically to withstand a large quake, according to a report from Fast Company<\/a>. <\/p>\n The building was constructed with 36 thin metal rods made from a flexible compound known as shape-memory alloy, according to the report. <\/p>\n These are designed to bend under heavy tension and then essentially snap the building back into its original shape. <\/p>\n “This is a place where they test, understand, and deploy new technologies in seismic zones year after year after year,” structural engineer Mark Sarkisian, a partner at architect firm SOM, told Fast Company. “It\u2019s remarkable what the professors here have done.”<\/p>\n