Workers restoring power to campus buildings after outage

Students and staff woke up Sunday morning to lights out in five different campus buildings, leaving IU Physical Plant employees scrambling to figure out the cause.\nThe IU Auditorium, Lilly Library, Woodburn Hall, Ernie Pyle Hall and Collins Center had no power due to 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.\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.\nThe IU Physical Plant is bringing in emergency power generators to help regain power temporarily until they find the main problem, Menefee said. By 4 p.m. Sunday, IU Utilities had already installed an emergency generator at the Lilly Library, the IU Auditorium and Collins.\n"We're hoping by 4 p.m. that all of the other buildings will be back to full power," Menefee said.\nIU Physical Plant workers had arrived at Ernie Pyle Hall at about 5 p.m. and expected power to be back up within two to three hours.\nAlthough Collins was running on an emergency generator by 3 p.m. Sunday, freshman Cameron Humphreys said the main lights in the building are pretty consistent but there is no power in the dorm rooms.\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.