The Badger Herald: News: Van Vleck shuts down, power outage to blame

News

Van Vleck shuts down, power outage to blame

JAKE NAUGHTON/Herald photo

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By Ken Harris
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:22 p.m.

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A clogged roof drain and a large amount of melting snow caused an electrical outage in Van Vleck Hall early Monday morning, forcing officials to cancel all classes held in the building.

A large amount of water from melting snow — in addition to a partially clogged drain — caused water to leak into the basement of the building, according to Physical Plant Associate Director Faramarz Vakilizadeh.

The water reached a power transformer, causing it to blow. This tripped a circuit, knocking out the power in multiple central campus buildings including Memorial Union and affecting the Internet networks on campus as well, Vakilizadeh said.

“If the drain is not enough to get rid of the water, it will look for the least resistant path,” Vakilizadeh said. “The water found the cracks and got into the building.”

The UW Department of Information Technology outage page said the power failure occurred at 3:33 a.m., and it took nearly three hours to find the cause of the problem.

However, physical plant employees had rerouted electricity to the other buildings by 6:30 a.m., Vakilizadeh said. This left only Van Vleck without power.

Vakilizadeh said though UW was aware of the problem early in the morning, students were not notified of the building closing until a formal communication from the Provost’s Office was posted on the doors of the building around 10 a.m.

UW spokesperson John Lucas said the departments that were scheduled to hold classes in Van Vleck Monday had been informed to handle the cancellation at their discretion. They were also responsible for notifying their own students of the situation.

Several students reported not being notified of the cancellations and arriving at the building only to find out the doors were locked.

According to Vakilizadeh, the university’s goal was to have the transformer problem fixed and the building operational by Monday evening, with the intention of having the building ready for classes to resume today.

It was announced around 4:30 p.m. to the Faculty Senate while it was in session that the building would reopen Tuesday.

According to Lucas, the loss of power also caused some sporadic Internet problems in the central campus area.

The UW DoIT outage page said the Internet networks in multiple campus buildings were affected Monday morning. Affected buildings included Chamberlain Hall, Ingraham Hall, Observatory Hill, Social Sciences Building and Van Hise Hall.

Chadbourne Residential College and Barnard Hall were also affected by the outage for a period Monday morning.

2 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | March 4, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply
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I hope it wasn’t terrorists. This is all the House of Representatives fault for going on vacation and not passing laws to stop the Bill of Rights from preventing warrentless searches! - Germain E. Stemme