A full diagnosis is currently underway after a significant outage developed on the Emporia State University campus Tuesday morning.
According to Director of Facilities Bill McKernan, the outage developed around 10:30 and lasted right around two hours before maintenance crews fully restored power just before 1 pm. McKernan tells KVOE News a tripped breaker led to the outage, but what exactly tripped it is still unclear at this time.
The outage affected nearly ten buildings including the ESU Memorial Union, Visser Hall, Butcher Hall, Cram Science Hall, Beach Music Hall the William Allen White Library, the Kossover Tennis Complex and Abigail Morse Hall. McKernan says some of those facilities were not completely powerless thanks to backup generators.
McKernan says facility crews and Emporia Police and Safety worked well together to help clear all buildings on campus and ensure everyone was safe during the outage.
McKernan says he does not foresee any additional issues in the near future. Electrical Reliability Services Vertik of Kansas City has been contacted to help diagnose the exact cause of the outage.
McKernan tells KVOE News they are hoping to have an answer by sometime next week.
1 pm Tuesday: UPDATE: Power fully restored to all buildings following outage on ESU campus
Power has been fully restored to multiple buildings that were left offline following a power outage on the Emporia State University campus Tuesday afternoon.
Power was restored just after 12:50 pm, a little less than two hours after KVOE was first notified of the outage. The original list of affected buildings reported to KVOE News included the ESU Memorial Union, Visser Hall, Butcher Hall, Cram Science Hall, Beach Music Hall and the William Allen White Library.
As work continued to restore power, both the Kossover Tennis Complex and Abigail Morse Hall were also found to have been affected, however, Abigail Morse was on generator power. While power has been restored to all affected buildings, work is ongoing at last word to restore HVAC service in the affected facilities.
The cause of the outage has yet to be announced.
12:45 pm Tuesday:
Nearly two hours after an outage was reported on the Emporia State University campus, maintenance crews have restored power to more than half of the affected buildings.
As of 12:40 pm, power has been restored to the ESU Memorial Union, Visser Hall, Butcher Hall and Cram Science Hall. Work is still ongoing to restore power to both Beach Music Hall and the William Allen White Library.
The outage was reported to KVOE just before 11 am and according to ESU personnel had developed roughly 15 minutes before that time. A cause has yet to be announced and an exact restoration time is pending.
11:15 am Tuesday: Outage affecting multiple buildings on ESU campus; Maintenance underway at this time
Emporia State University crews are working to restore an outage currently affecting multiple portions of the campus.
The outage was reported to KVOE News just before 11 am. According to university personnel, the outage had been ongoing for roughly 15 minutes before that time.
As of 11 am the outage was affecting the Memorial Union, Beach Music Hall, Visser Hall, Butcher Hall, the William Allen White Library and Cram Science Hall. A cause for the outage has not been announced and a timeline for restoration is not currently available.
Stay with KVOE, KVOE.com and KVOE social media for more updates as they become available.
