The snowstorm that passed through New England this weekend turned Tufts into anything but a winter wonderland, as electrical difficulties plagued the campus on Sunday. Downhill residents spent nine hours without power, and the entire campus experienced a disruption in phone services that was not repaired until yesterday morning.
Electricity in the downhill residence halls went off around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday after a malfunction in a feeder panel outside the Michael Chemistry Laboratory. The feeder panel is a device that distributes throughout campus the electricity provided by the electronic company. The problem was contained within Tufts and was not associated with Mass Electric.
"We think that the wind forced the snow into that panel," Facilities Director Ron Esposito said. "There's a gasket that should make it weather proof, and somehow that didn't do its job."
This is the first time that Tufts has experienced internal electrical difficulties in Esposito's seven-year tenure. But according to Esposito, the outage was unrelated to repairs that were made to the wiring in the Laboratory building last week.
Because of the high amount of voltage flowing through the panel, a special crew was called upon to fix the problem. The committee deemed it necessary to turn off electricity in other areas of the campus for a short time. Power was completely restored around 9:45 p.m.
Besides lights and electrical outlets, the outage also caused a failure of the entire campus phone system and also affected Ethernet access. The phones lost power when the initial shortage occurred, but were temporarily powered by battery backup. However, the power outage lasted longer than the eight hours supplied by the batteries, leaving no power source for the telephone system. As a result, campus phones stopped working just after 8 p.m., according to Marj Minnigh, Director of Special Projects for Tufts Computing and Communications Services (TCCS).
Although the electricity failure was only a minor inconvenience during the day, it became a major concern at night when stairwell lights did not turn on and heat and hot water stopped working in some campus locations. Each dormitory is equipped with emergency lighting, but the batteries that power those systems are designed to work only long enough for people to evacuate the buildings, and therefore also stopped functioning after several hours.
"Our emergency lights in Tilton didn't even work - the batteries were burned out," freshman Sabine Jean-Louis said. "I live in Somerville, and I actually went home because they didn't have any problems with their power."
Administrators say safety procedures exist so that residents of the community will never be in real danger in crises such as the snow emergency this weekend. Plans were in place to open up the Gantcher Center for downhill students to sleep in if the power was not fixed that evening. Furthermore, the blue-light phones around campus were never out of service because they operate off a different circuit, and dorm proctors' phones remained in service as well.
Although the electrical problems were fixed late in the evening, the phones were not completely restored until yesterday morning. TCCS believes that a power surge occurred when the electricity was turned back on, which blew some of the phone circuits. The voicemail system was also inoperable until yesterday morning, but Minnigh said it is fixed and no messages were lost.
The outage also caused difficulties for Dining Services, as grills and fryers that require hoods to remove exhaust from the kitchens were rendered inoperable. The Campus Center Commons and Jumbo Express closed not long after the electricity went out, and Dewick-MacPhie and Hotung had to limit their menus to easy-to-prepare items.
Dining Services workers were not able to wash dishes because of the power outage, and some employees had to come in early yesterday to deal with the aftermath. However, Director of Dining Services Patti Lee Klos said that the outage was not a major inconvenience and that it was handled smoothly.
"Most of the staff has been with us for a while. We have procedures in place and they know what to do and they're able to adapt," she said. "This is a metropolitan area. It's not uncommon to have some type of service interruption, even in your own home. It's just something that we cope with."
Esposito said that all the problems have been fixed and that Facilities checked the box again today to ensure that it is now weatherproof.
"This is an unfortunate situation that we would prefer never to have happen again," he said. "We spend a lot of time maintaining our high voltage systems, especially in the summer... this is just an odd situation that occurred."
