A power outage affecting Otto Miller Hall and Royal Brougham Pavilion left students and faculty in the dark on the morning of Monday, Sept. 25. The issue, since resolved, caused no lasting electrical problems.
Seattle Pacific University’s rowing team, whose equipment and training facilities are housed in Royal Brougham, were some of the first to experience ripples from the outage. Head coach Caitlin McClain explained that the team was initially given the go-ahead by the Office of Safety and Security to continue practice, which began shortly before 6 a.m. on Monday.
“I called OSS first to ask if I needed to cancel practice, and at that time, they said no,” McClain said.
The team began their exercises in the dark, using their cell phone flashlights to illuminate the weight room. But, only a few minutes later, an OSS officer arrived at Brougham and instructed the team to evacuate. Without access to any equipment, McClain made the call to cancel practice.
Across the street, Otto Miller Hall, home to SPU’s STEM programs, was also darker than usual.
Dr. Melani Plett, director of engineering and computer science programs, and several other faculty were contacted by Bethany Davis, the assistant vice president of facility management, informing them of the outage early Monday morning.
Davis explained that because the building had no power, key card access, water sprinklers and other safety features were inoperable, entry was unsafe.
Plett reacted to the news by emailing faculty and students, letting them know that classes would be affected. She, too, had to alter her class structure for the day.
“I taught online. It kind of reminded me of COVID,” Plett said. “Some faculty moved [class] online, and there was some option to move it elsewhere on campus. Some faculty did an asynchronous day, where they had materials online. Some just canceled class altogether.”
Sophomore apparel merchandising major Emeri Beitler was gearing up to attend Introduction to Statistical Reasoning in Otto Miller later that morning when she received a message from her professor saying the class would be held asynchronously.
For Beitler, the outage could not have come at a worse time.
“I was going to have a quiz that day, but then we all failed the previous assignment that [my professor] gave us,” Beitler explained with a laugh, “So she was like, ‘Okay, we’re going to push the test, until Wednesday, and have a whole review session on Monday to get you ready for the test.’”
Unfortunately, the outage meant a canceled review session. Beitler and her classmates were left to fend for themselves using a study guide and partial answer key provided via Canvas, with a quiz still slated for the following class period.
When students were made aware of the outage, the cause was still unknown, listed as only “Equipment Failure” on the Seattle City Light website. However, the issue was later identified as an underground cable failure.
Thankfully, SCL had better luck than Beitler, restoring power to SPU’s buildings before 2 p.m. that same day.
“City Light’s repair was completed Monday afternoon,” Davis said. “They replaced a blown fuse on a utility pole at 3rd and Nickerson and completed additional repairs in the underground vault on the west side of Royal Brougham.”
Since the cable was serviced on Monday, SPU has not experienced any further power disruptions.
As for Beitler’s quiz, which she was finally able to take on Friday, Sept. 29, she had mixed feelings about how it went.
“[It wasn’t] horrible,” Beitler said, “but the review session would have been very helpful. Let’s just say that.”
