From approximately 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night to approximately 1:45 a.m. Sunday morning, parts of the College campus and the town of Hanover suffered a power outage. The blackout was concentrated around the central area of campus, including all buildings around the Green, the Class of 1953 Commons, Massachusetts Row as well as southern and eastern parts of campus. The Choates cluster also lost power as well as some restaurants and stores in downtown Hanover.
The outage was caused by a failed “feeder line” from Liberty Utilities, the electrical company that supplies the College with power.
“[The feeder line] is essentially one way for Liberty Utilities to provide the College with power and its one of the main routes from their utility to our campus, and that one failed,” director of Safety and Security Harry Kinne said.
Liberty Utilities eventually restored power to campus by re-routing the way the College receives its power, Kinne said.
During the outage, the College’s power plant was able to generate some electricity to buildings which had lost power such as Collis, ’53 Commons and Massachusetts Row, Kinne added.
The College’s Facilities Operations and Management department is conferring with Liberty Utilities to figure out the specific reason for the failure of the feeder line. Kinne said the outage was due to a failure in Liberty Utilities’ infrastructure, not the College’s.
Safety and Security responded to several alarms on campus during the blackout. Kinne said that both fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors were triggered in relation to the power failure.
Some generators on campus succeeded in providing emergency lighting. However, the generators did cause diesel fumes to come into one building on campus.
“There was a report that came in that there was a smell and there was an indication that one of the carbon monoxide detectors had gone off in the generator room, so as a precaution we evacuated the building,” Kinne said. “The fire department arrived, made the determination and allowed people back in.”
Kinne was unaware if the outage was caused for the same reasons as a previous power outage last spring, though he said that the effects of both blackouts were similar.
The Hanover Police Department was also active during the blackout. The police helped man intersections where the traffic lights lost power due to the blackout and provided backup for the fire department as it was overloaded by alarm calls.
“I guess with the power outage there’s many homes or businesses that have generator backup,” Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis said. “Those were functioning, but they were setting off a lot of the [carbon monoxide] detectors.”
The police also patrolled areas experiencing power outages to protect property, Dennis said.
Students had different experiences of the blackout. Some students enjoyed the blackout, including Taylor Watson ‘16, who was in Baker-Berry Library.
“It was cool for me,” he said. “I was in the library and then the power went out and I didn’t know anyone around me but we all started talking about it.”
Depending on the building, some students fared better than their friends in dorms without power.
“I live in the River, so power was on the whole time,” Evan Morgan ’19 said. “I had a few friends who lived in the Choates who came over and crashed with me until midnight.”
Kevin Cheng ’16 said that he was inconvenienced by the power outage as he was trying to write an essay in the library when the blackout occurred.
“It made it very hard for me to keep my laptop powered on and write the essay because it was pitch black,” he said. “So I had to go find somewhere with light, which was a little bit hard to find.”Chinedum Uche ’18 said that the power outage disrupted her plans in another way.
“I took a nap and I was supposed to wake up 30 minutes later, so I left my lights on because that doesn’t enable me to go into a deep sleep,” she said. “Then the power went out, and I woke up four hours later.”
Some businesses were adversely affected by the power outage. Thai Orchid, which was on the block that lost power, had its kitchens shut down by the blackout.
“That day was really hard because at the time the power went out, around 7:30 p.m., my [customers] just started coming,” owner of Thai Orchid Pim Pinitmontri said. “The whole dining room was full. And there were a lot of tables who had not yet ordered.”
Ultimately, only two tables in the restaurant on Saturday were able to receive appetizers before the power outage, Pinitmontri.
The restaurant lost $2,000 on Saturday and $3,000 on Sunday due to lost business — it experienced continuing electrical problems into Sunday afternoon and evening. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are typically the days when the restaurant makes a significant amount of money, Pinitmontri said.
However, other businesses that did not lose power benefited from the blackout, such as pizza restaurant Everything But Anchovies. Manager Edward Bogosian said that EBA’s was already having a busy evening before the power outage caused customers to flow in at an even faster rate.
“It made us really, really busy,” he said. “They need to do it more often.”
At Salt Hill Pub, there was a less noticeable increase in business.
“It was a Saturday night so it was really busy,” general manager Jennifer Galvin said. “I know we got at least a couple people that came over from other places, but I don’t know that we saw a huge uptick in business.”
Morgan is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
