Power outage leaves 5 campus buildings dark

Students and staff woke up Sunday morning to lights out in five different campus buildings, leaving IU Physical Plant employees scrambling to determine the cause. \nThe IU Auditorium, Lilly Library, Woodburn Hall, Ernie Pyle Hall and Collins LLC had no power because of the failure of the buildings’ backup generators, said Mark Menefee, assistant director for the IU Physical Plant. Menefee said the primary generator failed Dec. 31, and since then IU has been running on the backup generators. \n“We have not determined what the failure is yet, but we’re looking for the problem,” Menefee said.\nBy 7 p.m. Sunday, the physical plant had already installed emergency generators at the Lilly Library, the IU Auditorium, Ernie Pyle Hall, Woodburn Hall and Collins.\nThe power outage proved especially inconvenient for parents and students moving back into residence halls Sunday.\n“It’s terrible to happen on move-in day,” said Dave Christian, father of Collins resident Leah Christian.\nIU Physical Plant workers are bringing in emergency power generators to help regain power temporarily until they find the main problem, Menefee said. \nAlthough Collins was running on an emergency generator by 3 p.m. Sunday, freshman Cameron Humphreys said the main lights in the building were pretty consistent but there was no power in the dorm rooms.\nIU Police Department Sgt. Don Schmuhl said only a part of Collins had electricity as of 7:30 p.m. Sunday. \nEven though physical plant employees are unsure of what caused the generators to fail, they are working hard to figure it out, Menefree said.\n“Students should be assured that (Monday) for classes, there will be full power,” Menefee said.