Education junior Megan Graber was alone in the basement of Payne Hall on the Tempe campus when the power shut off.
“To say the very least, it was horrifying,” Graber said. With no emergency lights to guide her, Graber used the walls and felt her way to an exit.
“It was an experience,” she said.
Graber was one of thousands of ASU students and faculty members affected by a power outage that turned off lights, computers and elevators on the west side of the Tempe campus for about five hours Monday.
ASU and Arizona Public Service officials said a rodent created a short in two feeder circuits when it crawled into a control cabinet at a west Tempe campus substation at about 11:20 a.m.
Electricity fried the small animal, described as either a rat or a mouse, and the power went down for multiple buildings on the west side of the Tempe campus, including the Memorial Union and Hayden Library. Wireless Internet was also cut off on that part of campus.
ASU spokeswoman Julie Newberg said the area affected extended from Apache Boulevard to University Drive and from Cady Mall to Mill Avenue.
ASU Police spokesman Jim Hardina said officers went building to building checking the elevators. They found three elevators with trapped passengers and rescued them within the first half hour of the outage.
APS and ASU Facilities Management crews worked throughout the afternoon to get power restored. Lights went back on for most buildings at around 4:30 p.m.
The substation that the rodent crawled into is located on the west side of the 10th Street Parking Structure near Coor Hall. Facilities Management spent the early part of the afternoon waiting for an APS crew to arrive. Workers with the power company eventually had to bring in a miniature crane to remove parts from the substation in order to assess the damage.
Many professors canceled classes or taught courses outside during the outage.
Urban planning sophomore Matthew Palma said his physical geography course in Coor Hall was canceled.
“When I got to class I was really confused because all the lights were off,” he said.
Undeclared sophomore Sydney Harrison said the lights went out at the end of her music class and the teacher released the students early.
“My other African American history class got canceled completely,” she said.
Some teachers didn’t stop class even after the power turned off.
The students in art education senior Brittany Barrio’s class were drawing a nude model at the time.
“We had to move the model over to the window,” Barrio said. “We were all kind of huddled together by the window because of it.”
Barrio said at first no one knew what was going on, but when her teacher found out, the students had to continue drawing.
Newberg said all science buildings equipped with refrigerators had back-up generators to keep power on.
Even though the lights and Internet were off, students were still allowed to enter the Hayden Library early in the afternoon. They used sunlight shining through windows to see their books and notes.
The library closed later in the day but reopened at about 11:30 p.m.
Reporter Tiffany Ngo contributed to this report.
Reach the reporter at kjdaly@asu.edu
