Blackout leaves campus in disarray

Compiled by Journalism 401Students

A power failure Wednesday morning shut down major parts of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa campus, leaving thousands of students, faculty and staff not knowing what to do.

The blackout occurred at 8:35 a.m. and lasted a little over an hour. According to Public Affairs Director Jim Manke, a circuit breaker problem may have led to the outage.

Carolyn Tanaka, vice president for external affairs and university relations said that 70 percent of the Manoa campus was affected. She added, "We believe that the problem occurred in the substation that feeds lower campus and the ewa side of campus."

Although power returned at 9:51 a.m. the lack of information during the outage seemed to raise concerns among students and staff.

Ann Ito, director of the UHM Kokua program, never received word or notice about the blackout. When the power failed, she didn't call anyone for further information. "I don't know who to call," Ito said. "I figure the lines are already jammed."

Campus officials were flooded with questions from concerned students and staff who were confused as to how to handle the situation. Captain Donald Dawson of Campus Security said his staff spent a lot of time answering phone calls from people wanting details of the blackout. Because Campus Security is not the main contact in procedures of this nature, Dawson said they had "no clue" of the blackout's cause.

However, Dawson said security's first job was to cover financial institutions on campus that lose their surveillance power, such as banks and the Cashier's Office. They also rescue people who are stuck in elevators. A Campus Security employee said about five or six people were stuck in elevators, but all had been rescued.

Janet Pinho-Goldman, secretary for the School of Communications, was one of those stuck in an elevator. She said a serviceman finally came 45 minutes later.

With security busy handling individual situations, the rest of the students had no one to turn to for answers. 

Erin Hazen, a second year marine biology student, had one of her exams pushed back because of the power failure. "I'm taking 20 credits right now, so switching around exams is really tough," said Hazen, who may now face as many as three exams next week.

"It's frustrating. I don't want to miss class, but I don't want to be here if I don't have to," said Hazen. "There's no way for them to announce (the power outage) so I don't know what to do."

Students and faculty members across the campus echoed Hazen's sentiments. Many people were still wondering what to do when the lights finally came back on at about 9:50 a.m.

Melanie Tucker, a microbiology and psychology major, still had questions about what she would do for the remainder of her day. "As far as class, I don't know what I'm going to do - if I should go or if I should stay," Tucker said.

Vicky Ra, junior anthropology major, had only one class today and after commuting 15 minutes to school just for that class. She decided not to go after learning about the power failure.

"I'm not sure (if the class was canceled) because I didn't actually go to check," Ra said. "It was actually kind of a surprise. If I'd known (the outage) was going to come I wouldn't have come to school."

Other students continued their classes in the dark. One student took her exam in a darkened classroom inside Kuykendall Hall, where teachers opened the windows for added light.

Despite the power outage, Hamilton Library continued to function as normal, with lights and computers running on full power. Internet service, however, was down, and the library's Voyager publication search system was inaccessible due to the disruption of UHM's main internet server. Students were unable to search for books online, but were able to find and check out books manually at the library circulation desk. 

According to Sara McBride, head of library communications at Hamilton, the library has been running without the help of generators since Saturday. Last year's flood devastated the library's power source, and the library just this weekend had begun running on independent power. McBride says that Hamilton Library was virtually unaffected by today's power failure because the library runs on HECO power, and is not attached to UHM's electric system.

Garret Yoshini, the Manager for Telecommunications and the Information Technology Service, said servers were down in Keller Hall. However, Yoshini said mid-sized UPS (batteries) allow backup for the orderly shut down of the servers, which is essential because data could be lost if proper procedures were not followed.

The data maintained at the Data Center includes all the systems that serve the university system, including financial aid, personnel, student information, administration information and UH email. Yoshini said there was a daily backup for all the production systems.

On-campus dining services were affected, with Paradise Palms offering limited service during the outage. Coffee service was available at the eatery, with staff serving cold coffees, recalling food prices by memory and accepting cash only.

Campus Center cafeteria and Ba-Le were closed until power was restored. According to Angie Youn, the administrative assistant at Campus Center cafeteria, the food preparations were unaffected, as their kitchen runs on gas stoves. Refrigerators were kept closed to prevent food spoilage.