Classes were canceled all day Tuesday due to a power outage at the Torrance campus only.

“At 1:18 p.m. (Tuesday), Southern California Edison lost power at the College and our surrounding community,” Jo Ann Higdon, vice president of administrative services, said in a press release. “The College was then closed for the rest of the day and evening.”

The outage, while enough to shut down the campus for the rest of the day, was short-lived.

“The good news is that Edison’s outage did not negatively impact our central plant project schedule,” Higdon said. “The College will be open beginning tomorrow morning.”

One negative may be the loss of air conditioning for a number of days, especially with summer setting in.

“Assuming no surprises, the air conditioning will be in full operation by Monday,” Higdon said. “Staff are working to restart all ventilation systems to allow night air cooling in our buildings.”

For updates on from the EC police department, students can sign up for a service named Nixle by texting “eccpd” to 888-777, according to the EC Facebook page.

The exact reason for the outage is still unknown, but it is expected to be routine.

“The city probably experienced the same thing,” Detective Haynes, who was at the Crenshaw entrance in front of the Humanities Building informing students, said. “It’s a hot day. Everybody wants to turn on their air. More than likely, it overloaded the system; when that happens, the city will systematically shut down certain grids to prevent overloading the whole thing.”

“They’re working on it,” he added.

Other members of the police department, who were the only staff members working on campus, were caught off guard.

“I was actually in class when it happened around 1:15 p.m., Layden Mays, campus police cadet, said. “After the power outage, I came into work and they said that the whole school is off today.”

The campus was empty for the most part, except for the police force and a few students who hadn’t heard the news.

“I wanted to get some pages printed, since I’m borrowing a book,” Cesar Cruz, 20, undecided major, said. “I have no idea what’s going on. I came to class at 10:30 in the morning and everything was cool until noon, but after 1 p.m., I don’t know what happened.”

*Updated at 10:45 p.m. Tuesday