If the power had not turned back on — which it did, just after 7 p.m. after a three-hour outage — students would have gone to the basement of Cobb Residence Hall for relocation assignments.
“When the power goes down, the internet is down, there is no lighting in the building, and sprinkler and electrical systems are all connected from a power source ... it is not safe for students to remain,” Rick Bradley, associate director of housing and residential education, said.
Bradley said students were told to go to Cobb for reassignments because it had a space big enough in case all affected students were to come. The outage affected four dorms in Olde Campus Upper Quad: Ruffin, Grimes, Manly and Mangum.
“The challenge that we have is that it always depends on the number of students affected. As the other night kind of indicated when it was isolated to about four of our residence halls and about 300 students, that’s certainly easier to manage than if it was campuswide,” Bradley said.
Allan Blattner, director of housing and residential education, said most students prefer to find their own places to stay if they are being relocated.
Bradley said if students need to be relocated, they are assigned to empty rooms on campus. He said most dorms on campus have back-up generators and would not be affected by a power outage.
The buildings without backup generators are Old East, Old West, Grimes, Magnum, Manly, Ruffin, Aycock, Everett, Graham, Lewis, Stacy, Spencer and Odum Village, Bradley said.
Blattner said power outages are also unlikely because power lines are underground.
