Spring Break
Power outage in Main Building, cause unknown
By: Noah Cohen
Issue date: 6/1/07 Section: News
Originally published: 6/1/07 at 1:30 AM EST
Last update: 6/1/07 at 10:58 AM EST
Originally published: 6/1/07 at 1:30 AM EST
Last update: 6/1/07 at 10:58 AM EST
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The outage was caused by a damaged power line in Randell that feeds the Main Building complex according to James Katsaounis, executive director of communications and marketing for the division of student life and administrative services.
Classes continued until the afternoon when the affected buildings were closed.
Night classes were cancelled according to the Provost's Office.
Day classes were initially allowed to continue at the discretion of the professor.
At first, University officials pointed to an overloaded substation as the cause of the outage, but further investigation revealed that a damaged power line at Drexel was the cause.
Jon Rufino, a spokesman for the southeastern Pennsylvania energy company, PECO, said that Drexel owned the failed line and that PECO had no outages in Philadelphia.
Katsaounis confirmed that the failed line was the cause of the power outage.
"The power line from the Ludlow substation to the Main and Randall substations needs to replaced, because it failed. PECO's line that feeds to the Ludlow substation is fine," an e-mail from Katsaounis said.
Officials from Public Safety and Facilities arrived moments after the power went out.
Additional security officers were seen checking classrooms and guarding the darkened areas of the building.
Drexel turned to the mobile alert system, introduced April 21, to spread the word about the power failure.
The system allows for users to sign up for University related notifications, including emergencies according to a May 4 report by The Triangle.
A text message was sent at 11:50 a.m. May 30 to inform students and faculty of the incident.
"Power in Main, Curtis, Randall and Alum Labs will be back around 3 p.m.," read the first message.
A second message text at 4:30 p.m. explained that classes would be cancelled and pointed to the Drexel website for updates.
In addition to text messages, University officials used a mass e-mail and voicemail to update the campus about the outage.
Since a blackout could make accessing technology difficult, officials also posted public safety officers around the affected buildings to update those who missed the alerts.
Work on the failed power line was ongoing at the time of this report, and the University has brought two generators to provide temporary electricity to the Main Building complex.
Facilities Management is still investigating the cause of the line failure, according to Katsaounis.
Students were largely unfazed by the outages.
Matt Ehring, a sophomore majoring in engineering, said his anthropology professor decided to cancel the class because of the lack of light.
"We can't really talk about it because we can't really see [the textbook]," Ehring said.
Ehring said his class was held on the first floor of the Main Building and was left completely dark by the outage.
"It's not really a big deal," he added.
Freshmen physics major Joe Gastion explained that his class relied little on electricity.
"You can still easily see, teachers mostly use the blackboard so they really don't need power," Gastion said.
incensed reader.
posted 6/01/07 @ 10:30 AM EST
THANK YOU Triangle for dedicating 50% of the paragraph to letting us know that katsaounis is "executive director of communications and marketing for the division of student life and administrative services. (Continued…)