On Wednesday night at 9:47 pm, the power went out. This was the second blackout this semester and the longer of the two. The first occurred Sunday night, and lasted a few hours (it was caused by a squirrel) affecting only a handful of buildings. The second occurred the night of Wednesday, October 12, affecting the entire campus and some other surrounding areas, and lasted until the last building was brought back on line at about 1:30 pm, Saturday, the 15th. The original cause of Wednesday’s power outage was, according to United Illumination, that the Pequonneck Power Station which serves the university and surrounding customers, went down. Unfortunately the substation in the parking lot of Mandeville Hall which serves the entire university alone was damaged in the process. So when other customers on the grid got their power back, UB did not. Ironically, the substation was scheduled for routine maintenance on Sunday from 6:00 to 8:00 am (the maintenance was completed during the power outage). The university does have backup battery power for emergencies which lasts approximately three hours (state law requires 90 minutes). The fire alarms and emergency lights were powered by the backup battery until generators could be hooked up. Students in John J. Cox Student Center at the time of the blackout said they were glad that the emergency backup lights were on because it made them feel safer moving around. The SGA House of Representatives meeting was able to continue virtually uninterrupted due to the emergency lights. Several students attempted to call security to find out what to do, but were unable to get through. PAL service was interrupted due to the lack of power.In the dorms, the Assistant Director of Residential life briefed the residents of Barnum Hall on the situation at around 10:30 pm. He was unable to use the loud speaker so he gave the information to the 30 or 40 residents who were present in the lobby. He asked the students to remain calm and told them that he knew that “it was a problem with UI and not the university” and there would be updates every 15 minutes. He was unable to give any information about classes at that time. Security officers were stationed at each of the dorms and Residential Advisors patrolled the halls of the dorms throughout the night.
There were no major problems reported other than the lack of power. Generators were brought in around 2:30 am and the residents woke up Thursday morning to electricity. Full power was not available to the university until Saturday afternoon. Cleaning services and maintenance that required the use of power tools were suspended in order to conserve power while still on generator. Classes were cancelled Thursday and Friday postponing midterms for a number of students.
According to Tom Sweeney, Director of Facilities for UNICCO, here at UB since September 17th of this year, the problem was not only the lack of power, but plumbers had to be called in, and electricians to hook up the generators and deal with the high voltage electrical systems. Since Tom is new to UB, the power outage did provide an opportunity for he and his staff to take note of any problems with emergency lights, fire alarms, and other systems, so that they can be fixed. Security staff worked round the clock to keep the campus safe. April Vournelis, Director of Campus Security explained that “communication was crucial” to getting things running smoothly again and expressed that the communication between Facilities Maintenance and Security was the best she has ever seen here at the university.
This power outage and the one last month have made it clear that preparedness is very important and plans are in the works to partner with the Red Cross in order to ameliorate the resources of the university. Security also wanted to point out that in tenuous situations, such as power outages, it is important for students to stay in a safe place (their room) and await instructions from Security or Residential Life. Patience and cooperation are the best way students can keep themselves safe and also enables the staff to best do their jobs.
The Directors themselves and the staff worked round the clock for more than two days to get generator power in place and then eventually to get the substation in Mandeville’s parking lot repaired so that full power could be restored. It was a long weekend for everyone involved.