November 2, 2011 - 2:35pm
Several campus buildings lose power, classes canceled in East Hall
BY BETHANY BIRON
Multiple buildings on Central Campus lost power this afternoon as a result of a power failure that occurred at about 10:05 a.m., though the power has since returned to all buildings except for East Hall, according to Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Diane Brown.
As a result of the outage, University officials have canceled all classes in East Hall for the rest of the day.
After the outage there was a subsequent surge at 12:23 p.m., at one of DTE Energy's nearby switching stations, Brown said. Many buildings experienced a "power bump" following the incident that caused them to temporarily lose electricity before turning back on, but an upwards of eight to 10 buildings experienced outages in which power was out for about two hours, according to Brown. She said most of the buildings regained power shortly before noon, though the second outage caused them to temporarily lose power again and extended to the Medical Campus.
Buildings reportedly affected by the outage include Angell Hall, Dennison Hall, East Hall, the Shapiro Undergraduate Library, the Chemistry Building and the Ross School of Business.
As of 12:30 p.m. Brown said most of the buildings had regained power, with the exception of East Hall, which is expected to be without electricity for the remainder of the day. She added that East Hall will be making various repairs as a result of the outage.
"They have some repairs that need to be done inside the building, and Public Affairs is going to look into how LSA is going to deal with any classes or staff in that building and if they were canceling," she said.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said he did not have any further information for how the outages would impact classes in other buildings.
"The problem with the power outages is it's hard to know how long they’ll last and how quickly they can get in there," he said.
