Stanford Report, October 24, 2009

Power outage postpones Friday evening women's volleyball game

Quick action by facilities staff members resolved a power outage Friday night that forced postponement of a women’s volleyball game and threatened the annual Roundtable.

At about 7:20 p.m., lights went out across a swath of campus known as Zone D, ranging from Maples Pavilion to the Green Library and including such facilities as Hoover Tower and Graduate School of Business buildings, according to Larry Gibbs, associate vice provost for Environmental Health and Safety.

In most buildings, generators restored limited electricity that provides support for basic lighting and other life safety support. That wasn’t enough, however, in the cavernous Maples, where the women’s volleyball team was preparing to take on Arizona State. The game was postponed until Saturday at 3 p.m. and the pavilion evacuated. Nearby lights on athletic fields, however, were unaffected, allowing competitions to continue in men’s soccer and women’s field hockey.

Also affected was a dinner at Green Library for participants of Saturday morning’s Roundtable, which this year featured renowned interviewer Charlie Rose and Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Google. Event planners feared the Roundtable might have to be postponed unless power was quickly restored.

At around 9:30 p.m., staff members from the High Voltage Shop began rerouting power to by-pass the fault area, restoring power to affected buildings by 10 p.m. — in time for workers to prepare Maples for the thousands expected to attend the Roundtable.

Robert Carpenter, director of operations for building maintenance,, who oversaw a temporary emergency satellite operations center with Gibbs, said the outage was caused by “a failure of the power distribution lines,” which are located underground throughout campus.

Gibbs anticipated that facilities crews would return to work on Sunday or Monday to pinpoint and fix the specific cause the power outage.

The women's volleyball team swept Arizona State (33-31, 25-21, 25-20) when play was resumed Saturday.