Several hundred students had a rude awakening as power outages hit Boston University’s Myles Standish Hall and several South Campus apartment buildings early Wednesday morning, leaving those students pondering the recent frequency of these incidents.
According to Maintenance Operations Director Bill Walter, a power outage occurred between 6:30 and 6:45 a.m. Power was later restored to Myles roughly at 10:30 a.m., and south campus electricity was returned throughout the afternoon, with the final building receiving power at approximately 3:30 p.m.
NStar, the electrical company BU receives its power from, spoke with BU’s facilities management office and explained that a line fault in a utility grid was to blame for the incident. Once the problem was determined, NStar employees immediately began rerouting the distribution of power on the grid around the fault.
“It was a time-consuming process,” Walter said. “A lot of manpower goes into it.”
Later in the morning at approximately 9:15 a.m., Walter and several of his facilities management employees witnessed smoke rising from a manhole on South Campus’s Mountfort Street, between Buswell Street and Park Drive. They alerted NStar, who discovered a burned out transformer 20 feet into the ground.
“A transformer is a type of device which increases or decreases the amount of electricity entering a building,” he said. “They’re all over the city, and this particular one was about 20 to 30 years old.”
Walter said his office is always happy to help NStar in bringing satisfactory services to university customers, particularly with the transformer incident.
“If we can assist in pinpointing a problem,” he said, “we’re more than happy to do it. We try to help where we can.”
Some university staff members said although the outage was not expected, their offices and resident assistants were ready to help students who had any trouble.
“It was not something we received notice about,” Residence Life Director David Zamojski said. “It was definitely not expected. Nevertheless, things like this happen, and we certainly have emergency procedures in a situation like this. Our resistant assistants will always take all necessary steps to direct students on what to do and where to go.”
According to Walter, the facilities management’s 24-hour-emergency line began receiving multiple phone calls about residents having their power out between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. After power was restored to the resident buildings and apartments, BU electricians were sent to double check that power was back and running.
This is not the first time an incident like this has occurred on campus. Last semester, students dealt with electricity outages, called voltage surges, in several buildings. Walter said they usually occurred because NStar was checking electrical vaults located in buildings or manholes in order to reroute electricity distribution lines and do some electrical wiring and rewiring affected by something like a fault. If you’re experiencing the same thing in your area, try A-Lumination Electric and similar services. You can also visit sites like https://callbigfamily.com/ to help you with any electrical concern.
“These voltage surges, also referred to as spikes or blips, are completely beyond the university and facilities management’s control,” Walter said.
Just last week, several students experienced a surge in Myles for less than a minute.
“We’re trying to ask NStar as much information as possible,” Walter said. “We’re definitely sensitive to the fact that these outages and voltage surges are occurring more frequently then anyone would like.”
NStar could not be reached for comment.
Walter said he and other facilities management employees would be meeting this month with NStar representatives to discuss the frequency and duration of these incidents.
“We want to see what our offices can do to help,” he said. “We’re trying to get better lines of communication in order to provide more reliable services.”
Some students in Myles say the outage this morning was an inconvenience that probably threw off many residents.
“Personally, if I hadn’t been aided by my cell phone alarm, I would have missed my first class,” College of General Studies sophomore Andrew Borden said. “It would have really upset me and started my whole semester off [badly].
“I’m sure the university and electrical company try everything in their power to make sure this doesn’t happen often,” he continued. “But it’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a safety hazard as well.”
Other students say they feel unsettled that this would probably not be the last time a power outage will happen.
“Obviously the problem isn’t being fixed,” College of Arts and Sciences freshmen Alexsandra Sternig said. “There definitely needs to be more communication between the university and our electrical company.
“Also, the more information the university provides its students about these power outages, the better,” she continued. “It gives us less criticism about the university, and it just gives us a peace of mind so we know what’s going on.”