With the recent Natural Disaster in New Orleans putting disaster preparedness on everyone’s minds you would think that we would be a little more adept at handling power outages of our own. However, we were reminded this Sunday how our lives are dictated by our commodities and how helpless we are without them. Mother Nature has her way of letting us know who’s in charge, be it in the form of a category 5 hurricane or a kamikaze squirrel.
Regardless of what you were doing, if you live in Seeley, Barnum, or Warner Hall you were partially if not totally with out power. Other areas with out power included Mandeville, Carlson, and Marina Dining hall as well as other areas across the City of Bridgeport.
The event occurred around 4:15pm, on Sunday September 18th. According to United Illumination electrical company, a squirrel chewed into a power line causing it to short out. Consequently, a 3 foot by 2 inch fuse in Mandeville blew affecting buildings on the same circuit. Around 12:15am, in an attempt to ratify the situation, United Illumination cut the power off totally in the affected buildings in order to try and figure out exactly where the fuse was located. Residents in those halls were temporarily evacuated and rendered homeless and abandoned (if only for a few hours), wandering from building to building in an attempt to find electricity. Many students ended up going back in to the darkened dorms. Some attempted to stay with friends in Bodine, but were turned away. Finally, at 1:25 am after one failed attempt, the electricity was fully restored.
Although we may commend United Illumination and Campus safety for rectifying the situation, the most palpable heroes and heroines in this event were all the RA’s in the affected halls.During the blackout they remained on duty, helped evacuate the residents, walked around with flash lights and comforted worried residents. Dee-Dee, one of the RA’s on duty during the blackout explained that it was difficult, they had little information to go on, but managed to gain some sort of control over the situation. To complicate matters it was a weekend and the Director of Residential Life, David Oestreicher was away when the incident occurred. RA’s rarely receive gratitude and Dee-Dee didn’t expect any. However, on behalf of The Scribe, I commend all the RA’s for their help during the black out, job well done. In-light of the event, I asked President Salonen what his thoughts were on the situation. “It is not possible to prevent freak accidents like this one from happening, what needs to be improved is the communication, how [students] can get to that information and alternate ways for us to spread it. For instance the website, we need another way for the people to access that information.”
For future reference if you’re in a dorm or anywhere remote, make sure to keep bottles of water, your medication, and flashlight (with batteries) somewhere near by and know where the nearest authority figure can be found.
University of Bridgeport
Tuesday, July 15, 2025