Left in the lift

Gater Staff report

It was hot outside, but the campus froze.

For just over an hour on a very warm Tuesday morning, campus computers froze, elevators halted between floors and some areas on campus were left in complete darkness as a blackout covered SF State and much of southwestern San Francisco.

"I think I'm a little shaky," said Sylvia Newman, a 78-year-old undeclared major at SF State, as she exited the elevator which had stopped between the second and third levels of the Humanities building during the episode.

"I was just sitting on the floor breathing very lightly," Newman said of her time trapped with two other people in the elevator . "We were calm, but concerned. Everybody behaved like human beings. We knew we were in a public building and we would be helped."

Sarah Taft, a journalism junior, was stuck in the elevator directly next to Newman's. Taft said she picked up the phone in the elevator when it stopped, and the person on the other end told her elevators all over campus were stopped with people in them, but help was on the way.

The blackout began at 10:48 a.m. and was caused by a cable failure, said PG&E spokesperson Diane Sable. She said 4,300 customers were affected between SF State and City College, and in the Ingleside district of San Francisco. Power was returned to the campus at 11:56 a.m.

According to Sgt. Amalia Borja of the University Police Department, the UPD was checking fire alarms and attending to the numerous elevators on campus where people were stuck.

"We were able to get everybody out of the elevators,' said UPD Lt. Stephen McLain. He said the UPD was aware of people stuck in elevators in the Humanities building, the residence halls and the Administration building.

While the campus computer system crashed because of the blackout, Heidi Schmidt, director of computing support systems, said there was no damage done to the network as a result of the blackout.

"The only thing that takes time is we have to check everything to make sure nothing needs to be reconstructed," Schmidt said. Nothing did.

The Internet cluster, the cluster of modems and machinery dedicated to student Internet accounts, was fully restored by 12.:40 p.m., she said.

In the Media Access Center in the J. Paul Leonard Library, some files were lost by students using computers in the lab, but everyone remained calm, said Dick Montgomery, the center's distribution supervisor. To avoid losing files in case of an outage, "people should be saving their work every ten minutes," he said.

Beginning next semester, the campus computer network will be equipped with an Uninterruptable Power Supply, an auxiliary generator which will automatically take over when power fails, Schmidt said.

People who were in the Cesar Chavez Student Center at the time were forced to evacuate.

"It is policy to evacuate the building when there is a blackout, said Mary Keller, program service manager for the student center. "One of the reasons we evacuate is because the lower levels get dark and it is hard to see."

While emergency lighting was on in the center, certain areas remained dark, such as the center's loading dock. Vendors were doing their best to load items which would otherwise spoil in the heat onto refrigerated trucks which were obscured, except for their headlights, in the darkness of the loading area.

"The blackout hurt a little bit. It happened during one of our busiest times. It always seems to be a blackout or fire drill during the busiest time of day. It was an inconvenience for some of the students when they evacuated the building, because they were still eating," said Mazen Fakhour, manager and co-owner of the Gold Coast Grill.

Marcita Keys, Alex Mullen, and Keith Brown contributed to this report.

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&quot;The blackout hurt a little bit. It happened during one of our busiest times. It always seems to be a blackout or fire drill during the busiest time of day. It was an inconvenience for some of the students when they evacuated the building, because they were still eating,&quot; said Mazen

[ back to Golden Gater Online September 21, 1995 ]

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