Part of Tempe, including a section of ASU, lost electrical power for five hours early Thursday morning, which disrupted operations at Hayden Library and four residence halls.
The outage was caused by a single-vehicle accident near the intersection of Rural Road and Rio Salado Parkway.
The outage was caused when a vehicle crashed into an electrical box near the intersection, police said.
The vehicle was unoccupied when police arrived on scene, and it was later found to be a stolen vehicle. The specific cause of the crash was unknown at press time.
Damaged in the collision was a switching cabinet, where connections between several power distribution lines are made.
The power to facilities west of Palm Walk and between University Drive and Apache Boulevard, including four residence halls, was lost around midnight.
"This was a pretty extensive outage," said Robert Mully, the acting electrical supervisor for Facilities Management.
Students living in Best, Hayden, Irish and McClintock halls were affected by the outage. But no problems were reported as a result of the incident, said Georgeana Montoya, an associate director of Residential Life.
University librarian Sherrie Schmidt estimated that about 30 patrons were in Hayden Library when the power went out. Most chose to leave, but six or seven students stayed to read and study in areas with emergency lighting.
"They were kind of huddled around the exit lights," Schmidt said. "It wasn't a very comfortable place."
While the library usually remains open to students all night, it closed about 2:30 a.m., after most students had left.
Officials from Information Technology were unavailable for comment on Thursday.
Michael McAllister, a student worker at the computing site in the W. P. Carey School of Business, said most of ASU's computing sites are equipped with backup power supplies.
Those supplies can provide electricity for 15-20 minutes after power is lost so the site can continue to operate normally while users finish their work and exit the facility.
An area within the city of Tempe between McKellips Road and Rio Salado Parkway and extending from Mill Avenue to Rural Road also lost power, said APS spokesman Damon Gross.
APS rerouted electricity through other lines to restore power to most of the affected customers by 1:25 a.m. Remaining customers -- including ASU -- received power by 5:15 a.m., after repairs were made to the switching cabinet.
Reach the reporter at brian.indrelunas@asu.edu.
