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April 6, 2010
Officials confidant about earthquake safety
photo courtesy MCT A hospital technician surveys a crack on the hospital floor after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Mexicali, Mexico.
By Juliana Campbell
Daily Titan Staff Writer news@dailytitan.com
Cal State Fullerton officials dedicate a lot of time and effort to insure the best educational experience, along with providing a safe environment for students attending the university. However, following the recent rash of earthquakes, campus experts remain confident in the integrity of the buildings on campus as long as students make themselves aware of the dangers. California is notorious for earthquakes and students are aware of the dangers that could be imposed on them if buildings were unsafe. According to CSUF Chairman of Geological Sciences, David Bowman, a big enough earthquake could damage any building, but that is not the biggest danger. People are unaware of the falling hazards that surround them such as unsecured books, computers and mirrors. “All of the buildings at CSUF are life-safe,” said Bowman. “Life-safe means that the building may be destroyed, but it’s designed to let you get out. CSUF also adheres with the California Building Codes.” One of the buildings students worry about collapsing is the 24,000 square foot Titan Gym designed by Woodford and Bernard Architects. The gym has been a landmark of the campus for years and some believe since it was built in 1965, it might be an unsafe building to occupy during an earthquake. Director of Environmental Health and Safety Tom Whitfield, who has been at CSUF for 36 years, has found himself in the Titian Gym numerous
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times. “The Titan Gym is safe because it is built to California construction standards,” Whitfield said. “The most hazardous part of an earthquake and the CSUF gym is probably going to be the lights and possible flying glass. Even though the building may be leaning or swaying, it will still stand.” According to Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Jay Bond, every time there is an earthquake, people learn more about
pened, anything would collapse,” Bowman said. “The San Andreas is locked and loaded, ready to go. It can produce a big earthquake today, tomorrow or 50 years from now, it’s time that people realize that.” CSUF has been very aggressive in doing seismic retrofits to buildings as issues to be become known, including the library, Humanities Building and College Park, Bond said. “We have also retrofit the falling hazards around campus,” Bond said. “We have a good track record relative to seismic safety.” Students should be aware in the event of a large earthquake, all institutional buildings, including the Titan Gym, will be unable to be occu– Tom Whitfield, pied until they are director of environmental health and safety inspected for safety. “People need to be prepared when a earthquake strikes, how buildings behave and how they the way people react can be a matter of life and death.” Whitfield said. should be designed. “The Titan Gym has been looked “Students should also be prepared to over and reviewed in great detail by be at school for a while.” Whitfield believes that one of the the CSU system-wide seismic review board, which is composed of some most dangerous things that people of the best and brightest structural do during an earthquake is to inengineers in the world,” Bond said. stinctively run outside a building. “They do not believe it is unsafe to The dangerous thing about running during earthquakes is the falling hazoccupy and neither do I.” Since the beginning of 2010, ards and congestion of people trying Southern California has had a few to do the same thing. “Any building could collapse earthquakes. The more memorable March 6 earthquake, inconveniently given a large enough seismic event, around 4:00 a.m., was a slight re- although collapse is very rare in ademinder of the devastation a larger quately designed institutional faciliquake could cause, and it was only a ties,” said Bond. No one can predict when an4.4 magnitude. According to the United States other earthquake will hit SO CAL, Geological Survey, California gets one that may cause colossal damage. earthquakes daily; fortunately, they Therefore, it’s always a great idea to be aware of what to do in case stuare too small for people to feel. “If a big enough earthquake hap- dents are on campus.
People need to be prepared when a earthquake strikes, the way people react can be a matter of life and death.
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Judge voids scores of Guantanamo cases MCT – A federal judge has dismissed more than 100 habeas corpus lawsuits filed by former Guantanamo captives, ruling that because the Bush and Obama administrations had transferred them elsewhere, the courts need not decide whether the Pentagon imprisoned them illegally. The ruling dismayed attorneys for some of the detainees who had hoped any favorable United Sates court findings would help clear their clients of the stigma, travel restrictions and, in some instances, perhaps more jail time that resulted from their stay at Guantanamo. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan wrote he was “not unsympathetic” to the former detainees’ plight. “Detention for any length of time can be injurious. And certainly associations with Guantanamo tend to be negative,” he wrote. But the detainees’ transfer from Guantanamo made their cases moot. “The court finds that petitioners no longer present a live case or controversy since a federal court cannot remedy the alleged collateral consequences of their prior detention at Guantanamo,” he wrote. Hogan’s ruling, issued last Thursday, but not widely publicized, closed the files on 105 habeas corpus petitions, many of which had been pending for years as the Bush administration resisted the right of civilian judges to intervene in military detentions. The U.S. Supreme Court resolved that issue in 2008, ruling in Boumediene v. Bush the detainees could challenge their captivity in civilian court. Since then, judges have ordered the release of 34 detainees while upholding the detention of 12. Attorneys for the ex-detainees were deciding Monday whether
photo courtesy MCT Detainees conduct morning prayers on March 28, 2009 at Camp 4 for cooperative captives at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney at New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, which has taken the lead in championing Guantanamo habeas petitions. The former prisoners who had filed the dismissed suits ranged from “people who disappeared in Libyan prison to people who are home living with their family and can't get a job,” Kadidal said. The “vast, vast majority” of former Guantanamo prisoners are under some form of travel restriction, he said, as a result of either transfer agreements between the U.S. and where they now live or the stigma of having spent time in U.S. military custody. “If you want to do haj at some point in your life,” he said, referring to a Muslim’s duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, a freed detainee would need to get those restrictions lifted. Moreover, he added, CCR affiliated attorneys have tracked former
captives to a prison at Policharki, Afghanistan, which was once run by the U.S. military. He said "the U.S. may be pulling the puppet strings" of their continued captivity. In the case of two men sent home to Sudan, according to an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Oregon Federal Public Defender’s office, which is representing them, the U.S. required as a condition for their release that Sudan seize their travel documents and prevent them from leaving the country. Hogan said the attorneys for the former detainees hadn't offered enough proof that other countries were operating essentially as U.S. proxies. “Petitioners are short on examples, except for the fact that former Guantanamo detainees from Afghanistan transferred back to Afghanistan have been detained at a detention facility built by the United States,” he wrote.