Everybody knows UC Berkeley straddles the Hayward Fault, but that reality hit home last December when a 4.1 temblor hit. Centered north of Berkeley, the quake caused no serious harm, but it fueled efforts to upgrade seismic retrofitting of buildings on campus.

One boost to those efforts came last October, when the campus received a $42 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to retrofit Hildebrand, Latimer and Barrows halls and the Samuel Silver Space Sciences Laboratory. The grant will cover about 56 percent of the cost. The campus must find matching funds to pay for the rest.

Another boost came a month later when California voters approved Proposition 1A. It will raise funds for education statewide and includes more than $75 million to retrofit LeConte, Wurster and Barker halls and the Archaeological Research Facility.

The U.S. Geological Survey currently reports a 67 percent chance of one or more quakes of magnitude 7 or larger in the Bay Area before the year 2020.