Power in Harnwell College House went out Tuesday night around 10:10 p.m. It was restored at about 11:40 p.m.
Emergency lights in the hallways, stairwells, mezzanine and lobby areas provided illumination for students to leave the building or move their studying to the hallways.
According to Division of Public Safety spokeswoman Stef Cella, one female student was trapped in a Harnwell elevator due to the outage. The student was released in about 15 minutes, she said.
Harnwell House Dean Suhnne Ahn said the cause of the outages is still unknown, but that more details would be forthcoming.
“The reassuring report is that our residents were remarkably calm and patient,” she wrote in an e-mail, adding that a number of students temporarily relocated to Harrison and Rodin college houses.
Last week, Housing and Conference Services sent an e-mail to building residents informing them that “power blinks” would occur on the mornings of Oct. 19, 21 and 23 at 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.
However, it is unclear whether these scheduled outages were related to the prolonged outage last night.
The outage appeared to extend to the buildings near Harnwell, as well, including a few fraternity residences.
Ahn said “an electrical outage of this scope” was the only one in her experience, though she did acknowledge a few “rather unusual facilities issues” in her time as house dean.
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