InBerkeley

Photo by Katey Alatalo

A group of demonstrators took to the streets today in Berkeley at the corner of Shattuck Ave. and Cedar St. to rally in support of health-care reform.  UC Berkeley student Katey Alatalo reported the event on Twitter, snapped this photo of the rally on her iPhone, and expressed surprise at the lack of press coverage of this event.

We don’t know who organized this event, or exactly what they were saying, but if anyone does know, we’d appreciate it if you could please post it in the comments section.

General, Issues, Politics

Oakland Tribune: “An underground water pipe broke in the Berkeley hills on Wednesday morning, flooding six homes and causing a 5-foot-wide sink hole, city fire officials said.”

General

I’ve got a little web app that makes it pretty easy to put together a collection of people on Twitter into a single stream. I have one for the New York Times, the people of Twitter Corp, a group podcast I’m a regular listener of, and the top 100 most-followed people.

Why not put one together for all the Berkeley twitterers I can find? Exactly!

http://berkeley.100twt.com/

Now this is just a beginning. If I haven’t got you on the list and you’re twittering from Berkeley, please post a comment here and I’ll add you right away! Or if you know someone we should be tuning into.

Let’s go Berkeley!

General

Did you know that in an emergency, you could automatically receive a call from the City of Berkeley with recorded information about wildfires, hazardous material spills, missing children and other dangerous conditions in your neighborhood?  Administered by the Berkeley Fire Department’s Office of Emergency Services, the Berkeley Emergency Notification System (BENS) allows the city to call residents at home to give them critical public safety information.

BENS can make calls to specific geographic areas such as streets, blocks or neighborhoods so that if a specific residential area were threatened by a wildfire, for example, only the residents of that area would receive a notification.Calls from BENS are pre-recorded, and the speaker will be very clear that it is an emergency call from the City of Berkeley. The system is tested annually for emergency exercises.

AT&T land line telephone numbers within the city of Berkeley are automatically registered to the system.  You can self-register your cell phone, pager and VOIP phone numbers (Comcast, Vonage, etc.) by visiting http://www.alertregistration.com/berkeley/. The system lets you set options to receive an SMS message, and you enter an email address, too. You may also register by telephone by calling (866) 484-3264, or through email at unlisted@firstcall.net. Once registration is complete, you will receive a phone call back from the system confirming your registration.

Emergencies

www.york.ac.uk

Washington Monthly’s newly released national university college ranking places UC Berkeley in the top spot.

Some ivy league schools, including Princeton, don’t even make the list, partly because money and prestige are not included as criteria when determining the ranking.

Rather Washington Monthly says it aims to produce a different kind of college ranking, rating colleges on their contributions to society. Questions under consideration include: Are they producing cutting-edge scientific research and PhDs? Do they steer their graduates into public-service jobs? Do they recruit economically disadvantaged students and help them graduate, or merely cater to the affluent?

Berkeley ranked first among public universities, and 21st overall, on US News & Weekly’s college ranking as noted by InBerkeley here.

[Hat tip: Today With President Obama.]

Education, UC Berkeley, University Education, UC Berkeley

After three months of summer, the sidewalks of Berkeley are full again this morning of kids going to school. I’ll hear later whether the 51 bus arrived in time to get my son to his first day at Berkeley High — along with 3,200 others. They’ll arrive at a great school, but one that faces huge financial challenges, like all of the state’s schools.

Principal Jim Slemp reported to parents last month that cuts have meant that BHS lost two counselors, one administrator, two clerical positions, two custodians and three or four teachers. The PTA newsletter reported six teachers were cut. Additionally, supply and equipment budgets have been sliced — the textbooks my son picked up at registration last week were more than a bit dog-eared. The cuts have meant that the school is staffed to handle its lowest projected enrollment, even though in September and October it is expected to have a peak enrollment. Students and parents will learn in the coming weeks just what that means for class sizes.

Berkeley, however, is fortunate that city voters have consistently supported extra funds for schools. BSEP funds (Berkeley School Enrichment Program) add money to BHS as well as middle and elementary schools each year. Interestingly — and typically Berkeley — allocation of BSEP funds in each school is decided locally. BHS, for example, will have something like $600,000 to distribute. Elections to BHS’s BSEP committee are being held on September 17.

Photo from Flickr by Jeremy Franklin

Education

18 years ago the hills of north Oakland and south Berkeley were on fire. I was living in the South Bay at the time, but remember sitting on the deck of a friends’ Potrero Hill home watching the huge fire across the bay. Back then it seemed remote, far away, but now I live very close to the part of the East Bay that burned in 1991.

On Monday on the weekly Rebooting The News podcast that I do with Jay Rosen, our guest was Cluetrain author and Harvard researcher Doc Searls. We wanted Doc on the show because he provides broad coverage of the fires in Southern California, from the vantage point of his home in the hills outside Santa Barbara. He fills in the blanks by connecting local bloggers who are experiencing the fire first-hand, with public information sources, maps and aerial photography. He’s just one man, but he does an amazing job.

At one point in the 45-minute interview, I asked him what we should do to prepare for a fire in the East Bay. It seems that sooner or later we’re going to have a repeat of the 1991 fire, and while we tend to be aware of the danger of earthquakes, there isn’t much talk about fires. Until a fire season like 2009.

Bluntly, if the hills above or below your house, or to the right or left, are on fire — what do you do? I assume you leave, but is there any preparation that will make it more likely that your family and your house survive the fire?

Which way to exit? Probably not through the Caldecott Tunnel. 80? 880? The Bay Bridge? What about public transit options?

What communication tools are available? Which radio stations carry the best info? Which websites? Will cell phones work? Perhaps this is something that InBerkeley could help the community prepare for.

Where is the fire likely to happen? Are we more or less at risk this year?

There is at least one remnant of the 1991 fire — it’s hard to find a vacant safe deposit box in banks on Solano Ave. I eventually did find one, when I moved to Berkeley in 2006, in a bank that opened a few years after the fire. One thing people learned from the fire was to store important papers and valuables in a bank.

There must be other practices, like that one, that we can learn from the experience of 1991.

We’re interested in learning what you have learned. If you were here in 1991, please share your story. Either as a comment, or via email to tips@inberkeley.com. Stories with pictures are more interesting. If you’ve lived through a fire elsewhere and have a story or tip to share, please do so.

General