Prospective students in town for the Bowdoin Invitational last weekend got a sense of what a Maine winters looks like, as a power outage left the campus dark early in the afternoon.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, campus security officer Amy Boyd noticed that Security had ceased receiving communications from the Smith House fire and emergency systems.
Several minutes later, the south side of campus lost power, touching off an almost campus-wide power outage that left students and tens of thousands of other Brunswick residents in the dark.
Bowdoin responded promptly to the outage. With more than 15 buildings equipped with generators, much of Bowdoin life was able to continue as normal.
Running on generator power, dinner at Thorne Hall continued as usual. In addition to dinner, Thorne also was able to serve Super Snack despite the power loss.
"You can't kill Super Snack," said Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols.
In addition to the dinner and Super Snack, the annual Bowdoin Invitational was another part of campus life that went on despite electricity. According to Associate Dean of Admissions Erby Mitchell, "The students I spoke with found it somewhat hilarious...for some it reinforced the myth that Maine is in the middle of nowhere, while for others it served as another sign of Bowdoin's commitment to energy conservation!"
However, not everything on Bowdoin campus ran smoothly. Despite being tested every two weeks, some campus generators failed to maintain power. Moulton Union's and Hawthorne and Longfellow Library's generators both experienced difficulties. In addition, at 4 p.m. the generator running the Security's communications center blew out.
"It is old and smaller than desirable...It burned out right in the middle of the power outage," said Director of Facilities Management Ted Stam. Facilities was in the process of installing a new generator that is now up and running.
While the majority of the campus lost power, the college houses and Boody Street dorm all were able to maintain electricity. Baxter residents took advantage of their power and held a get-together, which was subsequently broken up by Security.
However, according to Nichols, there were few other problems throughout the night.
"It was a quiet night on campus," he said.
With the IT generator up and running, Nichols was able to send out e-mails keeping the campus informed on the status of the outage. In addition, Security went to Maine and Winthrop to pass out glow sticks that were recently purchased by the Department of Safety and Security.
"You'd see groups of students all over campus, just glowing," he said.
According to Tim Hurling of Central Maine Power (CMP), Saturday's storm was more violent than expected. On Friday, CMP spent the day preparing, expecting power lines to go out during the storm. Despite preparations, Saturday was hectic for CMP.
"You made repairs in an area and thought you were pretty much done and then the wind would pick up and take out another line," said Hurling. In all, CMP estimated that 20,000 people were left without power in the Brunswick area on Saturday night.