The Day the Roof Fell InOver 75 years ago a campus construction accident caused the death of three workmen and serious injuries to many other construction workers.
The accident occurred at a new civil-engineering laboratory under construction that were part of a Depression-era campus building boom funded by a combination of State bonds and private gifts.
On April 8, 1931, as pouring of concrete to form the roof was nearly complete, a small section gave way, followed almost immediately by the entire roof, reported the Daily Californian the next morning. Men working below the forms and upon them were carried down into the open basement and buried.
An area of roof about 34 by 99 feet had failed, at a height above ground at 60 feet. The wooden forms to contain the wet concrete for the roof were held up by a temporary framework of supports called shores.
At least 11 workers fell the 20 yards to the ground. Ambulances and fire engines came. Berkeley firemen, city and campus police, uninjured construction workers, and student volunteers labored for hours trying to rescue the workers.
An investigation by the state Industrial Accident Commission that opened on campus on April 13 would fail to pinpoint the cause, or causes, of the accident.
Whatever the cause of the roof collapse, the walls of the building were still sound, and construction quickly resumed. The building, when completed, housed the campus Engineering Material Laboratory, designed to provide the College of Civil Engineering
