Equipment failure results in Saturday power outage: Upper campus in the dark for over 12 hours

By Dylan Pichnarcik News Editor A machine failure in Larned Hall caused a power outage to most of Framingham State University on Saturday, Sept. 21. Resident students were without power for up to 19 hours. Throughout the day, maintainers and Eversource Energy were on campus to assess the outage, according to Robert Totino, executive vice president of administration, information technology, finance and chief financial officer. Eversource and a contracted company, ABB - ESSCO, will return to campus on Friday, Sept. 27 for planned power shutdowns in order to complete repairs. The shutdowns will impact most of campus, according to Dan Giard, director of facilities and capital planning. The Saturday outage impacted the upper campus, Totino said. Upper campus is considered to be all buildings on the eastern side of State Street. This includes Larned, Corinne Hall Towers, Peirce, and Horace Mann residence halls, as well as the academic and administration buildings. According to Totino, a switchgear failed in Larned Hall, which subsequently impacted the switchgears in the other buildings and caused a power outage between 4 and 5 a.m. on Saturday. A switchgear is a piece of equipment that “actually turns it [the power] on and off for the whole building,” Giard said. According to Giard, each building on campus has a switchgear, however they all work in conjunction with one another. Giard said, “Sometimes if the switch tripped itself, it might just be that building that trips out, so it doesn’t affect the rest of the buildings. “It went further down the [power line] and tripped [the switch] on the [Utility] pole, which affected the whole upper campus. “It is not a typical failure,” Totino said. “These are high-performing pieces of equipment.” Eversource Energy, which according to its website provides power to the City of Framingham, was on campus Saturday, Sept. 21 to “diagnose [the cause of the outage] and assist the FSU facilities team,” said Totino. According to Totino, maintainers, including Giard, were able to make the necessary repairs and bring power back to the upper campus by 8 p.m. excluding Larned Hall, which remained without power until 11 p.m. Giard “worked with another outside contractor that was able to bring in a generator to campus.” said Totino. “Mr. Giard texted me at 11 p.m. that Larned Hall was back online.” As of press time, Larned is still running on a generator and will continue to run off of a generator until Friday, Sept. 27, when workers from ABB are scheduled to repair the switchgear. On Wednesday, Sept. 25, Larned experienced another power outage which lasted approximately one hour. It was caused by the generator running out of oil, according to Giard. Jamie Moniz, a sophomore resident of Larned, said the outage on Wednesday was “very inconvenient. “Especially for classes and practices, because there’s only a few hours in the day I can charge my phone and get ready,” she added. “We had one elevator working. I don’t believe we were reached out to about the outage.” Giard said, “Generators today are environmentally friendly, so they have a special oil that mixes with the diesel to make them more environmentally friendly. … Once that oil runs out, the thing just shuts off.” According to an email sent by the Office of the Dean of Students, “Eversource has scheduled a mandatory shutdown for maintenance repairs to an area-wide distribution equipment.” The shutdown is scheduled to start at 5 a.m. and end at 9 a.m. The repairs to the area-wide distribution equipment is not related to the power outage on Saturday, Sept. 21, according to the email. The second power shutdown will occur from 5 p.m to 10 p.m., which will “restore permanent power to Larned Hall,” according to an email sent by the Office of the Dean of Students. According to Giard, the repairs on the distribution equipment and the switchgear cannot be completed at the same time because of safety concerns. Lower campus, Miles Bibb Hall, West Hall, and the McCathy Center, were not impacted by the outage on Saturday and will not be affected by either of the power shutdowns on Friday, according to Giard. Giard added the lower campus has separate power lines which are fed from the power distribution center and boiler room located behind Dwight Hall. The administrator-on-call was notified by on-campus staff at 5:06 a.m. that the campus was experiencing a power outage, according to Jay Hurtubise, assistant dean of students. The first notification from Framingham State about the power outage was an FSUAlert at 11:05 a.m. The message stated, “The University is currently experiencing a power outage. Crews are working to resolve the issue at this time.” Hurtubise said, “Later on Saturday morning, our staff became informed that the outage would require further investigation and repairs, with no clear timetable for restoration of power. Staff then promptly prepared messages to be issued to the community.” The first email from Hurtubise was delivered to students at 12:04 p.m. It notified students that most of campus was without power. However, “[T]he McCarthy Student Center has full power and dining is available as regularly scheduled,” according to the email. Hurtubise said, “Sodexo worked with us to also extend the dining hours for Saturday, providing students with more time in those spaces.” The Dining Commons remained open until 8 p.m., according to a second email sent by Hurtubise to students at 5:53 p.m. Another FSU Alert was sent to resident students at 8:25 p.m. The message stated, “Power has been restored to all the areas on campus, except for Larned Hall.” A final email was sent to Larned residents at 11:44 p.m. notifying them that power was restored to the building, according to Hurtubise. He added the FSU Police Department was available throughout the outage for any safety or emergency concerns. Alyssa MacDougall, a sophomore, said she had a “long day in the dark. … I was very frustrated because it had been all day. “It was really inconvenient because I had a lot of homework and since I wasn’t able to charge anything, I was a bit behind.” MacDougall said. Angelina Anderson, a junior, said the outage was “really frustrating.” Due to the outage, she was unable to get ready for work. Anderson said the response from the Dean of Students Office “felt delayed,” and she did not feel informed. Jazmany Reyes, a junior, said he thought the outage lasted “way too long. … Why did it take over 14 hours to fix?” Brooke Drass, a sophomore, said she tried not to be in the building as much as possible just because there was nothing to do. “My sister had a game, so I went to watch it, and then I went to the mall.” Drass added she had a guest on campus during the outage and “tried to show her what campus was like. … It’s hard to show her what campus is like when nowhere has power.” [Editor's Note: Izabela Gage contributed to this article.]