UPDATE 4:17 p.m. Oct. 4. Xcel Energy stated in an email to TommieMedia that a substation in St. Paul lost power and left 14,000 customers without electricity, and that the cause of the outage was still being investigated.
A student was briefly trapped in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library elevator after a power outage afflicted St. Thomas’s north campus Tuesday morning.
The outage occurred at 10:15 a.m. on campus and lasted until about 10:30 a.m. Ben Opitz, electrician supervisor for Facilities Management confirmed that all the buildings on north campus lost power.
Senior Daniel Callahan was headed to the lower level of O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library in an elevator when the power outage occurred.
“I was stuck in there for a little bit; luckily, I had warm coffee with me to keep me company,” Callahan said.
Callahan said that it took Public Safety 15 minutes to get to him.
“I was totally fine,” Callahan said. “I had my coffee and my computer with me. … Got a little bit of work done at least.”
Junior Samantha Lang said that she was about to start her shift at the recently reopened Stacks Cafe in O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library when the power outage occurred.
“I was confused; I guess I didn’t know why the power went out,” Lange said.
Stacks was forced to close during the outage.
Last fall semester, the campus was struck by a power outage after a thunderstorm left buildings without electricity.
Owen Larson can be reached at lars6521@stthomas.edu.
Anya Capistrant-Kinney can be reached at capi2087@stthomas.edu.
Drew Nelson can be reached at nels81202@stthomas.edu.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
A student was in the library? Good news.