Perhaps because Memorial Stadium safety is not a key issue in the present court hearings, little attention has been focused on basic Stadium safety issues. Some opponents of the project claim that a renovated stadium can never be safe because it is situated directly on the Hayward Fault, one of the more likely faults in the state to rupture. But that may be because few researchers have examined the University's claims in detail.

The project does NOT call for the western side of the stadium to be built as a single strong reinforced structure. Instead, the west side will be divided into a series of discrete building blocks that can move independently of each other.

The blocks will be separated by 4 to 5 foot "joints" and individually supported on concrete mat foundations - each with stiffening concrete shear walls on all sides. This approach creates a series of strong stiff bunker-like units that could individually translate, rotate, and tilt in response to fault movement without causing significant internal damage to the block.

Each of the blocks will be constructed on a common base elevation with joints that would allow each block to move in the event of a fault rupture - without inducing loads to other parts of the stadium.

The author of the document filed with the court that addresses these stadium design issues is David Friedman, President of Forell/Elsesser Engineers - and a practicing structural and earthquake engineer with 31 years of experience. He supervised the base isolation retrofit of San Francisco City Hall, the Asian Art Museum, Oakland City Hall, and the Berkeley Civic Center - note that the City of Berkeley was F/E's client in the latter case.

The design of the stadium retrofit - as also that for the SAHPC - has gone through multiple layers of independent technical review by (for example) Degenkolb Engineers, Comartin Consulting, several professors of structural engineering (including Jack Moehle, the Director of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, and Prof. Jonathan Bray, Geotechnical Engineer and one of the world's leading experts on fault rupture mechanics), and by the Geotechnical Engineers of Record, Geomatrix Consultants, a diversified technical consulting and engineering firm with offices throughout North America.

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