Students living in Owls Nests 4 and 5, Huntress and Arcadia have faced maintenance issues recently.
On campus Associate Director for facilities and business operations for the Reslife Department Jim Carley said, “The issue was in the transformer that’s out front of nests four and five.”
Carley continued, “It was an equipment failure inside. It wasn’t with the internal systems of the buildings it was just the transformer blew so they had to replace it.”
Carley said the transformer affected Owls Nests 4 and 5, the laundry house and the garage. Carley said the issue started late in the afternoon on Feb. 22, until the following morning on Feb. 23.
Carley said, “It wasn’t every room, it was only some rooms. My take is that the whole transformer didn’t go but most of it went but there were still some parts of it working which is why some of the rooms in four and five still had electricity, but others did not. It wasn’t all of four and all of five that didn’t have power it was just certain rooms in the building. I think the transformer was twenty-seven years old.”
Carley said, “We were able to find a transformer from Eversource and it was transported here the next morning.” Carley continued, “The next morning when they replaced the transformer they had to take the old one out so both nests four and five totally lost power, from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m. or something roughly around there.”
Carley said, “It’s one of those things where you can’t predict it. Same thing with Huntress – you can’t predict when a piece of equipment is going to fail.”
KSC sophomore and Graphic Design major Skyler Baker said he was affected by the loss of electricity in Owls Nest 5. Baker said, “I woke up one morning and the power was on and I went to my 10 a.m. Then I came back and there was no power. So I go to use the bathroom and the bathroom has no electricity either and it’s pitch black in there. I had to bring a candle downstairs just to light it and see where I’m showering.”
Baker said he went to his fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, for the night.
Additionally, Huntress faced similar issues. Carley said, “Huntress had a problem in the main breaker for the building. It was the same thing it was an electrical issue, but totally unrelated. Huntress was not the transformer it was an issue with the mechanicals in the breaker.” Carley said Huntress lost power in the whole building from Friday Feb. 12, into Saturday Feb. 13. Carley said, “Both areas are all set we should be good to go for a foreseeable future.”
While the maintenance issues on campus have been resolved, an off-campus apartment complex, Arcadia, is still cleaning up after recent flooding. The Community Manager for Arcadia Apartments Tracy Jamison was unavailable for comment. KSC junior and Holocaust and Genocide Studies major Lea Guglielmo said that pipes burst on the first floor around midnight on Feb. 16. Guglielmo said, “We were in our apartment and the alarm went off and we thought it was the smoke detector. We went outside and didn’t see anything and then all of a sudden all the water was coming out. I actually talked to Tracy and she said that it was either from the cold or because the people who built Arcadia. The pipe that was in the ground, since the building shifted, the building hit the pipe and the pipe cracked. They said they didn’t really know why the pipe burst.”
Guglielmo continued, “We all went outside and they were telling us they didn’t think we could go in the whole night because the sprinkler systems weren’t working. They wouldn’t let us go get our keys to go sit in our cars so we were just standing outside for like forty-five minutes to an hour and it was snowing. It was a bad time. We were able to go back in though.” Guglielmo also said, “I know that they ripped the bottom fourth of a wall out because they didn’t want mold to grow.”
KSC junior and Health Science major Robin Kelly said, “It was entertaining but I was a little annoyed because I had to work at 6 a.m. the next morning.”
Guglielmo said, “They said it would take around two months to repair.”
Adam can be contacted at aurquhart@kscequinox.com
