Hundreds of classes were canceled and campus was shut down just before 10 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 7 due to an outage knocking out power in parts of El Camino College’s campus, El Camino Village and Alondra Park.
The outage affected phone lines, computers, lights, automatic doors, elevators, some restroom facilities on campus and shut down traffic lights on Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Redondo Beach Boulevard.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to an elevator rescue call on campus at 9:07 a.m., LACoFD Public Information Representative Esteban Benitez said.
Two students in the Math Business Allied Health Building and two students in the Arts Complex were left trapped in elevators. By 9:14 a.m., all four students had been rescued with no injuries.
Robert Brobst, assistant director of Facilities, Planning and Services said Southern California Edison engineers have not figured out the cause of the outage.
Brobst said the generators performed as temporary emergency lights in some buildings during the outage until power was restored at 10:05 a.m., after campus police had announced the campus was closed and canceled classes for the day.
Although some older buildings do not have generators, they have battery-powered lights, providing emergency lighting.
Toilets in various buildings, including the Math Business Allied Health Building, were not functioning as they had no power to flush during the outage.
As of 1 p.m. on Thursday, power had been restored in every building except for the Pool Classroom Building, due to the complexity of the building’s system and the high voltage connections.
Brobst said Facilities, Planning and Services contacted a company to help restore power in the building as it involves over 600 volts of electricity, although there was no estimated time of completion.
Police cadets were sent out to parking lots to help evacuate students, according to Kerri Webb, director of public information and government relations. They continued to patrol campus for the remainder of the day to “check for outage-related issues,” she said.
Webb said nonessential employees were allowed to leave campus. As a result, there were long lines of cars exiting parking Lots J and K.
Traffic lights were also not working on both Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Redondo Beach Boulevard, contributing to the long traffic lines.
Several students, faculty and staff on campus were affected in other ways by the power outage.
Many faculty and staff were forced to work remotely on Thursday due to the outage.
“We’re kind of at 50% function with employees,” Webb said.
Annette Owens, a part-time fashion professor, was sitting outside the Industry Technology Education Center (ITEC) waiting for power to come back on, instead of having office hours for her students.
She said she had to stumble in the dark basement of ITEC to put up a sign for her students letting them know office hours were canceled.
Owens said she had big plans for her fashion illustration class on Thursday, Dec. 7, as they are getting ready for their final portfolio.
With the cancellation of over 600 classes, students experienced heightened stress as finals week approaches.
El Camino student Maria Garaya said her anatomy class meets from 8 a.m. to noon, with an hour break beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 10 a.m.
Garaya said she had an exam on Thursday that was split into two parts. Although she completed the first part of her exam, she wasn’t able to take the second part.
“Now it’s my final and this test together,” Garaya said.
Student Gisele Galaz, 18, said she was in English class when everything suddenly went dark. Amidst the panic, Humanities Dean Scott Kushigemachi calmly informed Galaz’s class of the situation and ushered them out of the building.
“Some of my classmates were in the bathroom and the lights went off so they ran out of the bathroom because they were scared,” Galaz said.
Galaz also had a math class at 11:30 a.m. where she would learn the last two chapters of the course. After the outage, Galaz was left confused and unprepared heading into finals week.
Other outages have happened in the past, as previously reported by The Union. Similar to this outage, the most recent instance occurred amidst midterm exams in October.
Brobst said a similar outage happened recently, where an animal broke into a circuit in Alondra Park and as a result, knocked out power on campus and in surrounding areas.
Webb said classes will continue as normal on Friday, Dec. 8 despite the challenges that arose on Thursday.
“Everyone’s learned how to operate online now versus before [the COVID-19 pandemic]. This would have been disastrous but now it’s just like, okay we’ll just convert to online,” Webb said.
Students can check their Canvas accounts, emails and the El Camino website for further updates.
