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Emergency electrical shutdown Sun 6/14

Friday, June 12th, 2009

The college must make an emergency total electrical shutdown this Sunday, June 14 2009 starting at 7:00 am. It is expected to last up to 12 hours until 7:00 pm.

During the outage, the following electronic resources will not be available:

In addition, other campus services and resources (library, tutoring, etc.), may be impacted. Contact the specific department for additional information.

The power outage we experienced last week was caused by an explosion of electrical equipment in an underground vault on campus. This is Seattle City Light-owned equipment and it damaged feeder wires to our campus. Feeders to Northgate Shopping Center and a neighborhood beyond there were also damaged.

City Light has notified us that the damage is severe enough to put us in jeopardy of another unplanned outage with even greater damage and longer duration than we had last week. When we asked if the repair could be delayed for a week until after finals, Seattle City Light responded that the risk was too great.

The choice was to take a planned outage at a time of least disruption, or delay and expose the campus to an unplanned outage with additional damage and longer duration. After careful consideration of the risk to disrupting finals week activities and collaboration with City Light engineers, Sunday morning was selected. City Light crews will actually execute the work.

The schedule will begin with an orderly shutdown of electronic resources begining at 6:30am, followed by full electrical shutdown at 7:00 am. It will take about 2 hours to completely diagnose the damage and begin repairs. At that time it will be possible to estimate a more accurate time to restore power. Until then, they estimate

If necessary, City Light crews will work on continuously through the night until the campus is back on line. Facilities staff will be standing by ready to bring the campus systems back on line when the power is restored. Same for IT staff.

If you have registered for the emergency alert system, you will be notified when power is restored.

We realize that this shutdown may be an inconvenience to some; however, it would be worse for the power to go out during finals. We need to rely on City Light's expertise in making this decision. Thank you for your understanding.

 

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