Temporary power outages across campus
A resident of Centennial Court D walks through a darkened hallway on Oct. 18 with only the emergency lights on. The Kent area experienced sporadic power outages Thursday. Photo by BRIAN SMITH.
October 18, 2012
Power outages across campus are being attributed to substation problems with Ohio Edison, a regional power distributor for FirstEnergy serving northeastern Ohio, said Tom Euclide, associate vice president of facilities planning and operations.
Between noon and 1 p.m., the power temporarily went out, repeatedly, in a yet undetermined number of campus buildings. The majority of the buildings regained power after a short time with no reported damages. University power crews are working to manually reset tripped breakers in four to five of the campus buildings affected, Euclide said.
Rockwell Hall evacuated shortly after the building’s power returned when a sewing machine started smoking, Kent State police officials said. Multiple other fire alarms across campus also went off because of the flickering power.
According to the FirstEnergy website, approximately 2,014 customers were affected by the outages.
Check back on KentWired.com for more updates.
