POWER OUTAGE

Due to a power outage, the Trinity community lost all power across campus around 3:47 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 23, for approximately one hour.

Ivan Pendergast, emergency manager of Facility Services, sent an email to the Trinity community about two hours after the outage began. Power had been restored at this point. The outage was caused by City Public Services (CPS) when branches after fell onto a power line after employees were cutting tree branches.

“At this time, we know that the source of the outage came from within City Public Services and are unable to determine if there are more outages to come. We would like to recommend that you take precautions to prepare for future outages if they occur. Make sure to keep your cell phone charged, and if working on a computer, save your work or homework often. In abundance of safety, be sure to review the emergency exit routes for any building you are in,” Pendergast wrote.

James Baker, senior director of Facilities Services, explained how most buildings on campus retained emergency lighting.

“Almost all of our buildings have backup emergency generators, but they supply energy power to all of our life safety first which would be our fire alarms, emergency egress lighting, the exit lights that give you the direction. But we have no buildings that are one hundred percent full backup generator power. It’s all emergency based,” Baker said.

Baker explained that facility services had to restart facets of campus facilities.

“Once CPS did restore the power, we had lots of things that needed to be restored. When the power drops, for safety, there’s multiple pieces and components across campus that have to be manually restarted. [It’s] mostly pumps and large air conditioning units,” Baker said.