Michigan State University classes are expected to remain a combination of remote and in-person instruction for the next three to five days as the university continues restoring campus operations following Saturday’s widespread power outage, MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz said Monday.
“My guess is that we're going to probably have the deans making the decisions there. Their department chairs and faculty will be communicating out directly to students about specific courses, but it'll probably be a combination of both in person and remote for the next three to five days,” Guskiewicz said.
Kenneth McFarlane, associate vice president of Strategic Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, said the outage was caused by a piece of equipment failing inside the T.B. Simon Power Plant.
“(We are) still investigating the overall cause, but found the source, and we were able to resolve that and get things back up and online,” McFarlane said.
The outage affected 115 buildings across campus. Of those, 24 buildings need hot water and steam restored. Some facilities also experienced water leaks after the steam lines inside buildings cooled during the outage.
“The plan is to restore steam to all facilities through seven zones or phases,” McFarlane said.
After the news conference, MSU sent an email saying that 21 buildings had hot water and steam restored as of 4:30 p.m. today. The next buildings to be restored are Owen Hall, Business College and the MSU College of Law.
McFarlane said the university is working through various air conditioning, hot water and electrical issues as steam is gradually reintroduced across campus. The loss of steam continues to affect hot water, heating and cooling in some buildings.
“We're working on plans to provide access to hot showers as timelines for restoration of normal temperatures and steam pressure will vary across residential halls,” Guskiewicz said.
The university does not yet have an estimate for how much food was lost during the outage or the financial cost of the disruption. Patricia Martinez, associate vice president of Residential and Hospitality Services, said staff worked on Saturday to preserve food by moving it into deeper refrigeration.
“We did have staff that were coming in, ensuring that we were able to move food to deeper refrigeration, so that we'd be able to recapture or have the food stay fresh for us, but there was some food that we did lose so that we would not serve that food,” Martinez said.
About 19 calls were made by people stuck in elevators during the outage, said Mike Yankowski, MSU’s chief of police and executive director of public safety. Most of the calls came during the first hour of the outage, between about 4:10 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday. There were no reported injuries.
Some programs, including the College of Music and colleges of medicine, have continued in-person instruction in areas of campus that were not affected by the outage. Guskiewicz also said MSU’s research infrastructure has not been negatively affected and that electricity has been restored to research facilities, though some buildings may not have hot water restored until later this week.
For more information about the outage, visit https://msu.edu/emergency.
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