At around 8:25 this morning, students in the Academic Pavilion experienced a power outage that forced students and staff to retreat to different locations within the building. The outage was caused by construction work in the future parking lot near the Academic Pavilion.
“This morning, they were tilling the earth in preparation for the parking lot,” Assistant Principal Jake Short said. “During the process, a piece of equipment struck one of the three legs of the power that was coming into the building. It knocked out a lot of the lights, some of the WiFi, and the interactive displays. In order to fix it, we had to kill that whole leg of power.”
The outage is expected to last for the next two days as crews work to restore power to the structure. Other parts of the school are also feeling the repercussions of the outage.
“Basically the whole south side of the building is affected,” Short said. “Anything that was new within the last 10 years or so. So you’ve got the Student Activity Center, the weight room, the Natatorium and the Academic Pavilion.”
The outage is also affecting the swim team, who will not have practices today or tomorrow. Around 40% of the student body and around 25 teachers are affected. One of those teachers is English teacher Karen Gerhart, who was in the middle of teaching her dual credit speech class when the outage occurred.
“I was up in front of my classroom teaching,” Gerhart said. “It wasn’t a complete blackout, but the lights flicked off a few times and then back on again. You could tell it was the backup power and my screen was off completely. My students who were there said the bulldozer outside was going over the new parking lot and was smoking. There was a lot of smoke out there.”
Senior Mackenzie Nuttle was in teacher Nick Lyon’s math class on the second floor of the Academic Pavilion.
“Honestly, I think we were all scared because [the lights] flickered really bad. When the lights went out, the pool lights started flickering really badly too, so it was like ‘Oh my god what is happening,” Nuttle said.
Classes in the Academic Pavilion will be taking place in different locations for the next two days as crews continue to work to restore power. The Hall of Excellence will continue to have lunch tables until the pavilion cafeteria space reopens.
“We were told not today and were told to plan for two days,” Short said. “Now I don’t know if that means sometime tomorrow or if they’re going to have to call people in on the weekend. As of right now, I don’t anticipate any longer than tomorrow.”
