The week of October 7, power to Berkeley Lab’s main site was shut off by PG&E as a wildfire prevention measure. While the majority of the Lab community was not allowed onsite, the Lab’s Emergency Management Team worked around the clock to ensure that our facilities and equipment were safely shut down and safely brought back into operation once power was restored.
The Foundry’s Mike Wisherop played an essential role within the Emergency Operations Center, together with Terry Calarco from the Materials Sciences Division, working in shifts throughout the duration of the shutdown, as points of contact for the Energy Sciences Area. In particular, Mike worked late into the evening before the shut down, to ensure that Foundry equipment was powered down properly and that essential systems on emergency power remained functional during the outage. He communicated continually with Foundry management and staff, providing regular updates on the status of the Foundry and the Lab’s response to the shutdown. He helped coordinate our fast response to restoring our capabilities once the power was turned back on, and, together with EH&S, ensured that our spaces were safe for our staff to return and begin the hard work of bringing us back online for our user community.
Mike and the other members of the Emergency Operations Center team will be recognized with a Director’s Award for Safety at the Director’s Achievement Awards on November 15, 2019.
