Stanford alerted university members of a campus-wide power failure, at 9:16 a.m. Tuesday caused by torrential downpours and lightning storms in Palo Alto, as fierce weather affects the wider Bay Area.
“My elevator broke, and so I carried my scooter down the stairs,” Corinne Thomas ’28 wrote to The Daily. “And not having WiFi is super inconvenient for writing the papers I have to write, and having office hours canceled wasn’t super ideal either.”
The University followed up with a notification at 9:37 a.m. stating, “one of the main PG&E transmission lines feeding the campus is reportedly impacted, causing the outage. University staff is working with PG&E to determine an estimated time for restoration.”
Partial power was restored to campus at 10:38 a.m., and an hour later, power was fully restored, allowing operations to proceed as usual.
“Most of the (main) Stanford campus lost power this morning for approximately two hours. There were brief closures to some campus facilities,” University spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote to The Daily. “The university’s energy operations team worked with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to restore power through a backup service line.”
The power loss impacted students on campus in a variety of ways — dead phones, loss of wifi access, unusable fridges and elevator outages.
“When I went to collect my laundry, all the machines were turned off and the laundry room [was] pitch-black,” Clara Cestone ’29 wrote. “My clothes were half-damp, as the dryer had shut off halfway through the cycle.”
Backup generation, which can last for approximately four hours in an outage, preserved bathroom lights and key card access in residential buildings. Stern Dining, Arrillaga Family Dining Commons (AFDC), Wilbur Dining and Florence Moore Dining Hall (FloMo) were the only dining halls to remain open. The rest of the dining halls, except Lakeside Dining, reopened once power was restored and remained open until 3 p.m. for extended lunch hours.
Classes proceeded based on individual instructors’ discretion and the safety of teaching environments. Emergency announcements also instructed university employees to remain on campus. Some residents were notified to prepare for a potential second outage.
Wilbur Service Center recommends students fully charge devices, place perishables in refrigerators and obtain a flashlight and batteries in the event of further weather-related interruptions.
“I woke up and headed to class, but after I left, I realized that it was probably not happening,” August Hazel ’29 wrote. “So I went to the gym, and it was closed, and when I headed to the library, it was also closed and they weren’t letting anyone in. So I ended up wasting the morning.”