2008 Woodie Awards
Students, faculty and staff displaced by power outage
Ciaban Krommenhock
Issue date: 2/9/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
At 8:45 a.m. on Feb. 5, Las Positas College experienced a blackout until 11:40 a.m.
Immediately the fire alarm went off and all students were forced to the parking lot. Two of the fuses on a PG&E power pole adjacent from the campus were found tripped, which caused the entire campus to lose power.
The alarm went off because the fire alarm was turned off and on again without being properly reset. To the dismay of any student or teacher in a hallway.
Many students also reported hearing a load bang like a gun or a muffler going off.
All classes from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. were canceled.
Students were then asked to leave campus and were not allowed back in until noon.
Campus security even went as far as to block off the main entrance to the campus to any non-police non-bus and non PG&E vehicles. However, many students used the recently opened road to the east of the school, Campus Hill Drive.
It was rumored that the housing development, Shea homes, across the street, had been responsible for the power outage. In an interview with Bob Kratochvil, he said, "that the housing development never reported loosing power."
In an interview with Rich Butler, the head of security, he said "it is believed that a bird flew into a fuse box and caused the power to over load." However, the remains of the avian were never found.
Rich Butler went on to say, "When the bird flew into the fuse boxes it blew them out causing the loud popping sound many people reported hearing." The fuse boxes, which are on telephone poles to the north of the campus, were knocked down to prevent a power surge.
This is not the first time the school has lost power, last fall there was a transformer problem at night that knocked out power for the entire campus that didn't come back up until the next day.
The school is also considering Monday's fire alarm problem as the fire drill for the semester. Teachers such as Melissa Korber who was not in her room at the time the alarms went off was required to go back in to their classrooms to get their students out.
Rich Butler also wrote in an e-mail to the staff that the positive aspect to Monday's power outage was, "On the bright side several of our students now know there is a second exit and where it is"
Immediately the fire alarm went off and all students were forced to the parking lot. Two of the fuses on a PG&E power pole adjacent from the campus were found tripped, which caused the entire campus to lose power.
The alarm went off because the fire alarm was turned off and on again without being properly reset. To the dismay of any student or teacher in a hallway.
Many students also reported hearing a load bang like a gun or a muffler going off.
All classes from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. were canceled.
Students were then asked to leave campus and were not allowed back in until noon.
Campus security even went as far as to block off the main entrance to the campus to any non-police non-bus and non PG&E vehicles. However, many students used the recently opened road to the east of the school, Campus Hill Drive.
It was rumored that the housing development, Shea homes, across the street, had been responsible for the power outage. In an interview with Bob Kratochvil, he said, "that the housing development never reported loosing power."
In an interview with Rich Butler, the head of security, he said "it is believed that a bird flew into a fuse box and caused the power to over load." However, the remains of the avian were never found.
Rich Butler went on to say, "When the bird flew into the fuse boxes it blew them out causing the loud popping sound many people reported hearing." The fuse boxes, which are on telephone poles to the north of the campus, were knocked down to prevent a power surge.
This is not the first time the school has lost power, last fall there was a transformer problem at night that knocked out power for the entire campus that didn't come back up until the next day.
The school is also considering Monday's fire alarm problem as the fire drill for the semester. Teachers such as Melissa Korber who was not in her room at the time the alarms went off was required to go back in to their classrooms to get their students out.
Rich Butler also wrote in an e-mail to the staff that the positive aspect to Monday's power outage was, "On the bright side several of our students now know there is a second exit and where it is"
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