An unexpected blackout caught Southern University students off guard last Thursday when the entire campus including the campus living areas at the back of campus lost power.
Rumors circulated whether construction knocked out power or whether inclement weather was in the area that would have caused the outage.
Voice and data lines were lost due to a construction error just days before.
Richard Trollier, Superintendent of the Central Plant and Electrical Systems, said that there was an energy breaker that was triggered and that it came from the Swan Street substation.
When asked about if the blackout was done intentionally, said Trollier, “No. It was a circuit breaker that tripped”.
The timing of the blackout on campus was said to have occurred between 2:50 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Before it occurred, there were numerous students that were either in their dorm rooms, classes, in the library, or in the union killing some time before their next class.
Students were at awe as to how and why the power just all of a sudden went off.
According to Trollier, there are three circuits that control the power in the whole campus.
“Circuit one feeds the central plant. Circuit two feeds the main campus, and circuit three feeds areas north of the ravine, mainly the dormitory area,” Trollier said.
He explained that the plant had no control over Entergy and that they are responsible once the power on the campus goes out.
Senior history major Darryl Waker said that he was in his world literature class at the time of the blackout.
“While we were in our class, the power went out and the classroom got dark. We were forced to evacuate from the building the minute after,” Waker said.
Senior History major Henry Maiden said that once the power went out that he took it upon himself to look for his teacher and once he found her, they officially cancelled class and he headed out to his next class. He described the incident as a “mass confusion” for students.
Even though the power went out on the entire campus, the power in the dorms and apartments didn’t go off immediately after the front campus power went out. Sophomore History major Imani Robinson said that she wasn’t aware of the power outage on campus at first because the power where she was didn’t go off until later.
“Soon as we got word of the outage, we went over to the sub-station north of T.T. Allain & found that there was no power,” said Trollier.
“We contacted Entergy to reset the breaker and the power came back one. Once the power was back on, we made sure that the breakers at the sub-station didn’t go off.”
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Official:Tripped breaker caused blackout
January 26, 2012
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