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.
