Students' first weekend back on the Hill was an eventful one with a power outage on the main campus early Friday morning and a fire in Miller Hall early Saturday morning.
An underground cable fault in the main power line providing service to the university caused the power to go out on most of the main Medford/Somerville campus at approximately 1 a.m. Friday morning, according to a National Grid spokesperson.
National Grid workers were able to restore power back to the campus over three hours later at approximately 4:25 a.m. by switching the university over to a backup line while testing on the primary line continued, according to Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) Capt. Mark Keith.
The cable fault has since been repaired and power was restored back to the main line as of 9 p.m. on Friday night according to Keith.
The university sent out two notifications via SMS text message and e-mail informing students about the outage and the restoration of power.
Keith said that TUPD received no reports of any major security issues taking place during the blackout.
TUPD alerted the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) to the power outage and residential assistants (RAs) were deployed to man the front doors of dorms and to place battery-operated lights in stairways and hallways to provide lighting.
The power outage was the third in two years to occur on the main campus. The previous two outages occurring in October of 2008 and 2009 lasted much longer with the power going out for 14 hours and close to a whole day respectively.
The administration has been working to improve its response protocol following the first blackout when students expressed their concerns. Keith said the university's response to Friday's outage benefited from experience gained from previous blackouts.
With each episode you get a little better at it because you learn from mistakes so unfortunately we are getting better at it," he said.
Unlike last October's blackout when significant portions of Medford lost power, the outage mostly affected buildings on the main Tufts campus because the line affected was dedicated to the university. Some smaller wood frame houses on campus were also spared because a different grid services them.
Less than 24 hours after power had been restored, residents of Miller Hall had to evacuate at approximately 3 a.m. Saturday morning when the fire alarm went off.
TUPD and Medford fire investigators responded to the alarm and found heavy smoke coming out of a room on the first floor of Miller, according to Keith.
Miller Hall resident Asad Badruddin confirmed the report. "When I was outside I saw smoke coming out of the window - ¦ they didn't tell us what was going on but it was pretty obvious there was a fire," Badruddin, a sophomore, said.
Keith said the sprinklers in the affected room were activated and had mostly doused the fire by the time the responders arrived. He declined to comment on the cause of the fire until a final report had been released.
"I know that Tufts' fire marshal along with Medford fire investigators were investigating it over the weekend," he said. "There is some speculation on the cause but until the fire report from the fire marshal is out, I don't want to say."
Fire damage to the room was minor with most of the damage resulting from water from the sprinklers, according to Keith.
Danielle Pike, a sophomore living on the first floor of Miller Hall, caught a glimpse of the damage in the affected room Sunday morning.
"[The room resident's] personal belongings are outside of the room on the carpet in the hallway," she said. "There's nothing in the room, the drawers are taken out and on the floor, the walls are blackened by the smoke and there's ash on the walls."
Sophomore Arielle McAloon, a Miller Hall resident, said that most residents were allowed back into the hall at approximately 4 a.m., an hour after the alarm first went off.
The exception was residents on the first floor in the east wing of the hall where the affected room was, who were housed elsewhere for the rest of the night.
"Everything was flooded and wet so they didn't sleep there. I think some of them slept with friends or in the common room," Badruddin said.
Keith confirmed this and said that the university also found housing for residents who needed it. All residents were allowed back into the hall as of the following morning.
