Power loss hits South Campus
Parts of South Campus lost power in a planned outage for three hours Wednesday night due to a broken feeder line affecting one of two power substations on South Campus. Syracuse University issued a news alert at 3:19 p.m. Wednesday to inform residents who might be affected by the outage.
The residential spaces affected by the outage were Slocum Heights and SkyHalls I, II and III. It was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. and last two hours. SkyHalls’ power returned a few minutes after 9 p.m. and Slocum Heights at 9:30 p.m., residents confirmed.
Other buildings that lost power included the Tennity Ice Skating Pavillion, the Skytop Office Building, SkyBarn, the Inn Complete, the Upper Pump House and the daycare and nursery school, according to the news alert.
Kevin Noble, manager of engineering in the Office of Campus Planning, Design and Construction, said National Grid informed the department of the problem mid-day Wednesday. The downed feeder was caused by a faulty aerial line – part of the overhead electrical poles – where a crossarm was failing to support cables, he said.
‘If it deteriorated any further, it would cause the feeder to trip out and cease operating,’ Noble said. ‘It would have caused an immediate power outage.’
To prevent this, the university scheduled the planned outage.
The feeder line supports one of two power bases on South Campus. Noble said only the line powering everything south of East Colvin Street was affected.
Monica Shworles, manager of the Inn Complete, a graduate student, faculty and staff pub, called her staff in to work but couldn’t open until 9:15 p.m. when the power came back on.
Shworles said she found out about the power outage via e-mail around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.
‘I obviously wasn’t very happy, because we weren’t able to get proper notice,’ she said.
The Skytop Office Building operated on a large portable emergency generator.
An emergency generator was also on location at Goldstein Student Center to support the campus network so students could access Internet.
Kate Thompson, a freshman psychology major, lives on the third floor of SkyHall III. She said she had to go to Goldstein to do work because she was unable to access the Internet from her residence hall.
Thompson said she found the timing of the planned outage inconvenient.
‘It’s kind of weird they did it so late,’ she said. ‘I really wish they’d done it in the morning. Everyone is in their dorm from six to late, so people just kind of had to chill for three hours or go somewhere else because it’s so dark. People were taking flashlights into the bathrooms to take a shower.’
Pete Slavish, a freshman in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, also lives in SkyHall III. He was at Goldstein doing work and came home to a floor of people celebrating the outage.
‘I don’t think anyone is just sitting in their rooms. Everyone’s out in the hallway not getting any work done,’ he said. ‘A bunch of girls are just playing music and dancing on the table in the lounge. People in the hall are using storm lights to do homework. It seems like a pretty big bonding experience.’
– Asst. News Editor Bethany Bump contributed reporting to this article.
Published on March 18, 2009 at 12:00 pm
