(THE PICKET)—Shepherd University students were left in the dark and without Internet services for a period of time Tuesday evening, Sept. 22.
“I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was community wide. It affected Shepherd University and 125 community (homes),” said James Vigil, vice president for administration.
Students across the campus said they heard a loud noise.
“I was walking back to my dorm from an evening class when I heard a loud bang coming from somewhere,” said Allison Compton, 20, a senior psychology major. “It sounded like a gunshot or that a truck backfired.”
Compton said that at the time of the noise, the lights went out at the Frank Center and the Wellness Center.
“I was in the (Robert C. Byrd Center) and the lights went off,” said Rachelle Huff, 21, senior math and computer science major. “I heard the transformer blow while I was walking back to my dorm.”
Vigil said that the power surge happened somewhere on the electrical grid managed by FirstEnergy, and that surge subsequently caused the campus outages. The power surge was directly related to the Internet and Wi-Fi outage.
“The power outage caused a significant amount of damage. The power surge took out a generator that serves our information technology servers room… all of our IT,” Vigil said.
According to Vigil, service technicians were at the university most of the night working to restore the information technology systems.
“Everything is back and running… email and Internet was back by 10 p.m.,” said Vigil. “The student information systems and wi-fi were back up at 9 a.m. (Wednesday).”
“I had a very cold shower this morning,” Compton said.
All functions were restored and operating normally by mid-morning according to Vigil.