Power Failure Displaces UMBC Students

About 200 UMBC students living in campus housing were relocated to motels Tuesday night after the university was struck by its second power failure in five days.

At around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, as engineers powered up residence halls that have been dark since last week's transformer explosions and fires, the electricity blinked out once again.

The university closed at 3 p.m. and canceled evening classes.

In an interview with Arbutus Patch late Tuesday evening, UMBC deputy police chief Paul Dillon said that the university hopes to be powered up and open again by Wednesday.

“We’re not making any promises,” Dillion said. “We’re working as we speak.”

According to UMBC officials, on Tuesday afternoon a surge protector at the university’s central plant was tripped, which triggered an automatic shutdown of the campus-wide electrical grid.

Work crews at the central plant remain tight-lipped about the electrical problems and fixes, and declined to estimate how long the campus will be without power.

When asked whether there had been an explosion in the second outage, a worker who asked not to be identified replied, “Sort of.”

The transformer explosion Thursday evening sent a huge fireball above the campus police station and caused grass fires. The explosion also spewed very hot mineral oil–used as coolant fluid in electrical transformers–over a large area, including two police cars. No one was injured in the incident.

On Tuesday afternoon, faculty and staff drifted out of darkened buildings expressing varying levels of consternation and amusement.

“Isn’t it amazing,” remarked an academic who asked not to be identified.

“Sorry, I meant to pay the bill,” joked a staffer, who also asked that his name remain unpublished.

Others are more sanguine. “It really isn’t much of a disruption,” said Bev Bickel, who teaches languages, literacy and culture. “I had to cancel a meeting.”

Portable generators were put in place to power critical areas, including the university’s plant and research labs where animals are held and temperature-sensitive experiments are conducted with incubators.

About half of the 400 students who had been living on campus were moved into the Susquehanna Hall last Friday.

While a tractor trailer-sized generator provided enough electricity to keep the lights on in Susquehanna Hall, there was not enough power to run the building’s air conditioning, according to Dillon.

With temperatures forecast to approach 100 degrees on Wednesday, “to have people in a building without air conditioning was not feasible,” Dillon said.

Students were transported to off-campus accommodations by UMBC’s shuttle buses, and Susquehanna Hall was emptied and locked by 9:15 p.m.