The usual rush of students starting their weeks with 11:30 a.m. classes was interrupted Monday when a blackout across campus plunged tunnelgoers and windowless rooms into darkness.
Campus stayed dark for nearly two hours before power was restored just after 1 p.m., Susan Fekete, a spokesperson for Hydro Ottawa, told the Charlatan in a statement.
The outage impacted buildings across campus and the surrounding area, according to an emailed statement from Carleton.
The loss of power was caused by “an overload on the system which caused a breaker to trip,” Fekete said.
Across campus, elevators halted, and heating was impacted in some buildings. Students looking for a quick bite were out of luck — some campus restaurants briefly closed and the Dining Hall in Teraanga Commons was also impacted, with to-go lunches packed for 1 p.m.
At Bridgehead in the Nicol Building, coffee machines and card readers stopped working, manager Jenn Noseworthy said. Baked goods and food were sold for cash only, with transactions done the old-fashioned way: by hand with pens, paper and calculators.
Many students had to be turned away, Noseworthy said.
Emergency lights brightened the tunnels beneath campus and most buildings.
Carleton’s facilities and management planning department worked with Hydro Ottawa to resolve the outage, the university said.
Featured image by Brendon Poste/the Charlatan.
