Power Outage Electrifies College

Students working on midterm papers at 11 p.m. the night of Oct. 12 were forced to take a study break when half the campus and a portion of the town lost power for 40 minutes. The extensive failure shut down lights, computers and dorm key card entry systems across South campus.

The high power substation for the city experienced a surge due to a small animal electrocuted somewhere on the line that blew two out of three patches in the system. Although all of campus receives power from the same source, North and South run on slightly different structures, so North campus was unaffected. The power loop for North campus feeds two ways, which provides a back-up for a break in the system. When power was interrupted in the loop, there was only a flicker of the lights as the circuit reversed direction. South campus is not equipped with this, and lost all power.

Mudd Library, crowded because of midterms, was on the system that failed. A back-up generator provided power for the lights and elevators.

Another outage followed on Oct. 13. at 1:27 p.m. Power was not properly shut off before a worker began to repair the system that failed the previous night. He was electrocuted, causing a surge in the system that shut down electricity to parts of the campus once again. The worker suffered severe burns and a broken pelvis when he was knocked off the ladder. He was flown to Cleveland for treatment.

Bob Jones, Interim Director of Safety and Security, was called at home late Thursday night after the first outage. Power was not lost at the Security building, and there were no specific security incidents related to the loss of power, but Security must play a role in any incident like large-scale electricity loss.

"When the power goes off it causes havoc around here because the key entry fails. We get a lot of calls ‹ everyone reporting no entry, no lights," Jones said. Safety and Security's log has the Oct. 12 power loss recorded as occurring the night of Oct. 13.

Although students reported losing work when their computers shut off, the night of Oct. 12 was not all tragedy. Sophomore Ben Nisbet said of the outage, "It caused me to get on the roof of Harkness and howl at passers-by. It also elicited the quote, ŒQuick, get some beer! The power won't be out forever.'"