The power went out for half an hour across Biola’s campus on Mar. 27, affecting overhead lights, automatic sliding doors, air conditioning, Wi-Fi and elevators.
“The protective relay for campus power failed, causing our campus main breaker to trip,” said Biola’s chief of Campus Safety and associate vice president John Ojeisekhoba. “After switching over to our secondary protective relay, Facilities Management was able to close the main breaker and restore power to campus.”
Campus initially lost power at 3:10 p.m. At 3:16 p.m., partial power was restored, but went out again. This occurred again at 3:28 p.m. At around 3:33 p.m., lights and air conditioning returned to normal, and campus-wide internet returned at approximately 3:40 p.m.
When the outage occurred, the university’s emergency alert system promptly notified students, faculty and staff via email and text. The system activated emergency doors, and the Student Union Building and Eagle’s Nest closed to prevent people from getting stuck inside.
Ojeisekhoba stated that the university had procedures to respond to a variety of incidents on campus.
“Biola’s internal Emergency Response Team was activated, and we followed our plans for responding to [a] power outage,” Ojeisekhoba said. “Appropriate messages were sent to students, faculty and staff.”
One of these messages directed students regarding safety measures.
“Outage assessment is ongoing to determine the cause and duration. If your area/class is dark/unsafe please safely evacuate,” the alert said.
When the outage occurred, one person was in the elevator in the library.
“I don’t know if the person was a student or not, so someone was in the elevator, and Campus Safety promptly responded and stood outside the elevator talking to the person while the power was out, and stayed there the entire time,” said librarian Jeremy Labosier. “Then the power was restored, the door opened and the person came out. Campus Safety checked them out, they were fine [and] declined medical treatment.”
Although power returned half an hour after the outage, a buzzing sound rang through the library’s main middle level for another fifty minutes until approximately 4:33 p.m.
