Off-campus block loses power

Greek life was plunged into darkness last night as houses on Spruce Street, between 39th and 40th streets, lost power when a transformer blew. The blackout apparently stretched from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity house at 307 South 39th Street to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at 3934 Spruce Street. The Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house, located at 3940 Spruce Street, retained power. According to College senior and Pi Beta Phi sister Valerie Cashour, power went out in the chapter's house at 3916 Spruce Street around 9:30 p.m. "We have no idea what caused it, but we were the first house to call PECO," she said at about 12:45 a.m. today. "They told us if it was not that serious, we'd have electricity by 1 a.m. -- if it was something more complicated or more serious we wouldn't have power until [later today]." College junior Wendy Moore, another Pi Phi sister, was working on a paper for History 421, European Diplomatic History, when the outage struck. "We have a five-page paper due [Thursday]," she said. "I had about half of it done, and I came back from my night class and decided that I wasn't going to sit down and do it right away. I felt kind of guilty, but about a minute and a half later, as I was about to sit down at my computer, all the lights went out." Cashour said the sisters, surrounded by 16 candles, were making the best of a bad situation. "We're foodless," she said, referring to the fact that the house's refrigerator was not functioning because of the lack of electricity. "But we're bonding over enough candles to make food if we need to -- we're going to make s'mores." College senior Vaughn Spencer, a Beta Theta Pi brother living in the chapter house at 3900 Spruce Street, said another Beta brother with a paper due today was forced to pack up his computer and take it to the high rises so he could finish the assignment. "We're basically sitting here in our front room under emergency floodlights," Spencer said. Beta President Bill Cooper, also a College senior, said DeKE brothers had visited the Beta house earlier in the evening "because their power is out also." "I have the LSATs on Saturday," Cooper said. "I wouldn't be studying anyway, but this basically sucks." At 1:13 a.m., a PECO Energy call-taker said the company had dispatched a crew to the scene about a half-hour before. "They're trying to locate the problem," she said. "I think it's a transformer problem in the area." By 1:58 a.m., PECO Energy spokesperson David Hackney said the crew would be working through the night to restore service. "In that area, the transformers are underground," he said, explaining the difficulties the crew was encountering during its repair effort. "It's probably going to be about eight in the morning before they get power restored."

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