By Nicholas Gallo
Contributing Writer
St. Bonaventure University’s campus faced a power outage on Friday, Sept. 15.
From Plassmann to Doyle Hall, students and faculty on campus were “powerless.” Robin Hurlburt, director of facilities operations and maintenance, explained the cause of the outage and the actions that were taken to restore power.
“Around 12:40 p.m., reports were coming in about one of our buried lines being out,” Hurlburt said. “There was a fault of an underground cable on our 13,200-volt electrical distribution system.”
As a result, the 13,200-volt line and the 4,800 line had to be shut down.
“First thing to do was shut down because of burning out the machines,” Hurlburt said. “Immediately, we called the National Grid Provider and the 4,800 lines were fixed, but we had to strategically maintain and bring back power to the 13,200-line.”
The maintenance heard the call and jumped to action.
“In the age of cell phones and instantaneous reporting, our staff reacted effectively and efficiently,” Hurlburt said.
“I also had a wealth of resources from crew leaders in our trades to the previous director who is now a personal associate. In addition, our protocols that we have established, the planning we go into, and the actual live-action exercises that are not transparent to the public helped in this situation.”
Some students on campus were shocked that on such a beautiful day, the campus would lose power. Corinne Miller, a sophomore double major in classical languages and philosophy, was surprised by the sudden power outage.
“I was frustrated,” said Miller. “There was an enormous amount of work I had to get done before the weekend, which required electricity. I called security and asked what was going on, and they responded with ‘we are aware about the power outage and we are getting it fixed as fast as we can.’”
Miller wanted to get her work done, so she ended up leaving campus.
“I went to my friend’s camp ground in Franklinville because I knew I would be able to get my work done there, and plus, there was power,” said Miller. “I did jump the gun though, because as soon as I got to the camp ground, the power was back on.”
As of now, power is back on to all residence halls and buildings except the maintenance building.
“As of right now, we have no update regarding a quick fix to the issue,” said Hurlburt. “I think we are talking days, not hours, as the direct line buried is not easy to pull out of the ground. We have to dig a ditch and have several contractors pull out the line.”
Maintenance’s focus in this situation is that everyone is safe and secure.
“We were fortunate to respond so quickly, and I am proud of our employees who went that extra mile to make that happen,” said Hurlburt. “Safety is our primary concern as we want to execute are objectives carefully and strategically.”
The individual contractors have already dug up the old wires with a loader bucket and are now in the process of rearranging the wires back into the transformers.
gallonv17@bonaventure.edu
