Blown transformer creates problems across campus

Several buildings around campus were left in the dark Tuesday when a transformer adjacent to the Hibbs Building exploded during the early morning hours causing a power outage.

“To use the descriptive words, it blew up,” said Brian Ohlinger, associate vice president for facilities management.

The Pollak Building, Hibbs, Anderson Gallery, the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, James Branch Cabell Library and Ginter House were affected. The library was able to remain open all day. The Pollak Building and the performing arts center were up and running by 9:30 a.m.

Although only some of the classrooms in Hibbs were affected, Dominion Virginia Power shut off power to the entire building in order to replace the transformer. Classes were cancelled until 4 p.m., said Edwin Blanks, vice provost for academic administration. VCU officials said they did not have the time or space to relocate the morning and early afternoon classes or notify students.

The power wasn’t the only thing affected by Tuesday’s incident. Both the campus network and the Mac computer server, which are housed in the basement of Hibbs, were not functioning.

Network analyst for the College of Humanities and Sciences, James Spivey, said when the transformer exploded he had to shut down the network and the server, which he said caused the Mac server to stop working properly.

“We generally like to leave it on, but we wouldn’t have power for more than 30 minutes so we had to shut it down,” Spivey said, adding that anytime a server is left running all the time, there is a risk of problems occurring when it’s restarted.

Because the out-of-service network affected more individuals across campus, Spivey said he made restoring it his first priority, before working on the Mac server.

Since the Mac server is not part of the standard server, it had to be re-created. The data had to be copied and re-installed, which takes a considerable amount of time, he said.

Many of VCU’s 150 buildings are not equipped with generators for back up during a power outage. Ohlinger said it would not be possible to support that many buildings and systems.

Transformers explode on campus about once or twice a year. This particular one was probably the result of old age, he said. Squirrels, however, have also been known to damage power equipment as well.

“It (explosions) is a relatively infrequent occurrence,” Ohlinger said.

As transformers are enclosed, there was no risk to passersby during the explosion.