Jack McElwee, April Campos, Bryce Goldinger, Emily Carmela Nelson

A campus wide power outage Tuesday night snarled campus operations and inconvenienced students. 

The power outage began around 6:30 p.m. and a BroncoAlert was sent to students at 6:51 p.m.

According to Tom Moore of the Boise Fire Department, the outage was caused by a smoking transformer behind the Recreation Center. 

“We had a report of a transformer that was smoking, possibly on fire,” Moore said. “We responded and did find one of the large transformers behind the Recreation Center… had, like, a burning plastic smell, which is usually the wiring insulation burning off the wiring.”

After the fire department arrived at the scene, Idaho Power took over and de-energized the transformer and performed repairs. 

“We stood by and made sure to make sure it wasn’t actually on fire,” Moore said. 

No injuries were reported, however Moore said a man was stuck in an elevator in the Stueckle Sky Center at Albertson’s Stadium during the outage. 

“We sent other units over there to go assist that gentleman out of the elevator, but he was not injured,” Moore said. “Just stuck due to the power outage.”

The power outage extended to student housing as well. In Chaffee Hall, students had to grapple with the reality of an evening without power. 

“Though at first we did take it pretty unseriously, we now realise just how grand it’s going to be not being able to use general appliances,” said Olivia Taylor, a freshman and Chaffee resident.

Freshman Chloe Suydan also expressed discontent with current conditions. “It’s been annoying since we can’t take a shower with hot water or working lights.” 

Braden Turner, another freshman, illustrated frustration with the inability to monitor or charge electronic devices. “I can’t do homework in my room because it’s too dark and my phone’s about to die.” 

However, as of 7:50 p.m. on Tuesday, all units had been cleared from Stueckle Sky Center and the Recreation Center and power had been restored.