An aging electrical cable caused a power outage yesterday morning that left northern sections of campus in the dark for more than five hours.
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, the Gold Coast and Russell Sage-Butterfield clusters and Richardson, Silsby and Wheeler Halls were without power from 9:12 to 9:45 yesterday morning. The Choates Cluster was powerless until 2:37 in the afternoon, said David Foster, an electrical engineer.
Foster said an aging cable near Webster Cottage, which is located on Webster Avenue across from Kiewit Computation Center, was responsible for the blackout.
He said this sort of failure "may be typical for that age cable" and that there is an ongoing Electric Mains Program to update the College's underground network.
Telephones, heat and plumbing continued to work despite the blackout. Facilities, Operations and Management employees said propane generators kept emergency systems, such as fire alarms, fully functional during the blackout.
Difficulty locating the break in the Russell Sage/Brown Hall cable was responsible for the five-and-a-half-hour repair time for the Choates, Electric Foreman Bill Corrett said. "You have to isolate the problem and go to the end of the circuit."
Once the gap was located, engineers "taped up and re-insulated the cable" to solve the problem, Foster said.
An employee at the heat plant speculated that power to the other buildings was restored more quickly because the electricity was rerouted through another circuit.
Kathleen Karr, the administrative assistant for the Women's Resource Center, which is located in the Choates, said the Center's staff moved to Kiewit during the blackout.
Government Professor Thomas Nichols said he was forced to move his seminar, "Soviet and Post-Soviet Civil-Military Relations," from a classroom in Rocky to the Hinman Forum because "the alarms came on," adding that "it wasn't a massive inconvenience."
Students living in the Choates seemed most annoyed by the utility failure. "The stuff in the refrigerator got damaged and my cordless phone didn't work," complained Tom Haven '98, who lives in Cohen Hall.
Chom Sangarasri '97, a Brown resident, said she lost a paper she had not yet saved when the power went out.
