Written by Blake Matthews
Several buildings on campus went dark Wednesday afternoon after maintenance workers were forced to turn off the electricity while they replaced a damaged power cable.
The controlled power outage took place just after 4 p.m. Lights and computer screens in the McInteer and Stevens buildings, the Heritage Lobby and Cafeteria, the Benson Auditorium, the Brackett Library and the student center went black. Most of the affected academic buildings were empty at the time, as Harding’s Physical Resource Department had warned professors in advance.
Director of Physical Resources Danny DeRamus was at the site of the electrical problem: a trench approximately six feet deep between the Benson Auditorium and the Olen Hendrix Building. He said the problem began during a storm Tuesday when Physical Resources received reports of natural gas “bubbling up” from an underground pipe. A maintenance crew was sent to dig down and repair the gas leak at noon Wednesday, but a power cable was accidentally damaged in the process.
By DeRamus’s estimate, the accident occurred around 2:15 p.m. The Olen Hendrix Building immediately lost power.
“A guy who works in [the computer lab] came out, and he was upset because he had been working on something and all the computers were out,” said senior Marcus Binns, who was walking through the Hendrix building when the lights went out.
He said that students and professors were confused, but no one was in any serious danger.
“There’s not, like, anybody on life-support in there,” he said.
Getting the power back on involved more than simply replacing the damaged cable. Maintenance Coordinator Dana McMillion said the cable was connected to a “tap box,” one of the green boxes that act as an “extension cord” and route power to various buildings on campus.
“If you look at these green boxes as electrical plug-ins in your house, there’s a plug, there’s a plug, there’s a plug … it just goes all the way around,” McMillion said.
Those “plugs” send 13,000 volts of electricity through each cable, enough to cause fatal injuries.
“You can’t even be close to it, because it’ll arc you,” McMillion said, referring to the way electricity can jump from a power source to a conductor — possibly a person — through the open air. To avoid this, the entire tap box had to be switched off and the power supply to roughly one third of campus disrupted.
“They basically told us before they pulled the plug,” sophomore Aaron Tucker said.
He and junior Jordan Dollins were in the Benson auditorium, one of the first locations that Physical Resources powered down. Tucker and Dollins were painting and decorating hand props for Spring Sing and had to move into the sunlit lobby to keep working.
“We can’t work outside, since we’re working with glitter,” Dollins said. “It goes everywhere because it’s a windy day.”
Tucker said working in the lobby was difficult, especially trying to keep paint off the tile floor. The biggest inconvenience, he said, would be to the social clubs that had scheduled Spring Sing rehearsals in the Benson.
In the student center, Aramark employee Sylvia Baker had been working with other employees to secure food and money when the power went out at 4p.m. She said most of the food was not in danger of spoiling, but items like Chic-Fil-A’s chicken sandwich could only sit out for a short amount of time. After that, Baker said, she started giving the sandwiches out to students.
Terrie Smith, the Catering Director for Aramark’s Classic Fare Catering, was told an hour in advance about the power outage.
“We thought it was an April Fools joke for the first 30 minutes,” Smith said.
But she and her staff, who are responsible for the food in the Heritage Cafeteria, had contingency plans to feed students if the power did not come back in time for dinner.
“The students have to be fed, and that’s our first priority,” Smith said.
However, the electricity came back on in time for dinner. Only the Hendrix Building was still dark after 5:30. DeRamus, McMillion and the maintenance crew had spent the past hour and a half replacing a broken part on the tap box, and now the damaged cable was ready to be removed.
One end of a rope was tied to the old cable, and the other end was tied to a prong on a forklift. As the prong moved upward, it pulled the cable out of its underground casing. The other end of the old cable was attached to the new cable by another piece of rope. So, as the old cable came out, the new cable was pulled through and laid into place.
By 9 p.m., the lights in the Hendrix Building were back on.
“It’s a positive thing for our campus, that we can do all this ourselves,” McMillion said.
Most schools that encountered a similar problem would have been forced to hire contractors, which can cost “many thousands of dollars.”
