Power outage slams campus

Moustafa Ayad
Andrea Zimmermann
Daily Egyptian

An over-pressurized water tank burst Monday afternoon in the basement of the Physical Plant, causing a 75-minute power outage that sent hundreds of students spilling out of darkened classrooms and professors scrambling to save costly research projects.

At 2:48 p.m., seven buildings and the steam plant lost power as a large amount of water drenched the electrical distribution system in the Physical Plant. The water soon seeped through the ground and onto the University's circuit breakers. Electrical workers at the steam plant temporarily solved the problem by switching the eight affected buildings from the damaged circuit to another that was already running electricity to other parts of campus.

University officials said they will not know the cause of the leak or the extent of the damages for a couple days. Officials also said they do not know whether the tank's pressure is routinely checked.

At 4:05 p.m., power was restored as workers scrambled to find replacement parts for the circuit breakers fried by the spill. University officials said the breakers would be fixed around 6 p.m. Officials also said they are not anticipating any more major outages and will be watching the system closely.

Brad Dillard, associate director of facilities, and his staff answered more than 150 phone calls that came in the first 15 minutes of the outage as physical plant workers tried to centralize where the system had failed.

Dillard said the buildings involved are not the heaviest users of power on campus, but did represent significant electrical loads. He said the phone calls streaming into his office helped lead the workers to the crux of the shortage. "We have an excellent electrical distribution system, but it is not fool-proof," Dillard said.

Physical Plant workers were expected to stay late to check each affected building's electrical system, Dillard said.

Several buildings on campus had emergency generators up and running within minutes of the power outage, including the Physical Plant, Dillard said. Faculty members in the Life Science II building said they do not have back-up plugs to use in case of blackouts, unlike other science buildings like Lindegren and Life Science III.

Dillard said the University's emergency lighting system and fire doors in affected buildings responded accordingly.

Reports from the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts differed. Those who were in the Communications Building at the time said the emergency lighting and the fire doors, which are supposed to close to stop the spread of fire in an outage, did not function properly. The fire doors never closed and the emergency lighting did not turn on until 20 to 30 minutes into the outage.

Some buildings had sags and surges in their electrical systems as the power went off in the affected buildings, but did not experience a blackout, Dillard said. He said the University has routines in place to minimize the level of confusion after an outage, but the volume of frantic telephone calls proved otherwise, he said.

SIUC police said no thefts had been reported during the period of the blackout.

Students like Tony Walton walked out of class onto the grassy area in between Lawson Hall and the Life Science II building stunned and relatively talkative as classes adjourned early because of the outage. Walton said the blackout helped him escape a quiz that he hadn't study for.

"Too bad I probably won't learn from it," Walton said. The blackout did not mean a free day for microbiology faculty members, who paced outside their laboratories on the first floor of Life Science III. There are no backup plugs to make sure the refrigerators, freezers and incubators continue to run and every passing minute without power put years of research in jeopardy. "Everybody's sort of on pins and needles," said Donna Mueller, office manager for the microbiology department.

When the power came back on, shouts of joy rose from the halls of Life Science II as faculty and student researchers raced into their respective labs. Microbiology Chairman John Martinko said Monday's blackout is one of the worst he has seen in years.

"There have been too many big ones like this. This is scary," Martinko said, as he ducked into each lab to check the cultures. Andy Hawkins, a central systems operator in the Facility Operations Center, said the University faced recurring power outages at the residence halls about ten years ago that resulted in the University spending $1 million to replace feeder cables.

Hawkins also said a six-foot snake that was electrocuted a couple of years ago in an electrical substation caused a major outage after the 12,000-volt cables shorted out.

Chris Kohler, director of the Fisheries, only shook his head as he chuckled when the power came on. "It figures the power comes back on after I sent everybody home," Kohler said.