As students moved back to campus for the semester, UF Housing and Residence Education notified those who live on campus of a three-hour long power outage that affected parts of campus.
Buildings on the east side of campus lost power Saturday morning, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said. The three-hour outage, which started at 7:15 a.m., was due to a equipment failure at a substation on Archer Road, said Peveeta Persuad, a Duke Energy spokesperson. Duke Power notified UF officials that it was working to restore power at 9:15 a.m. By about 10 a.m., power came back on.
Sikes couldn't confirm which buildings were affected, but Duke Energy said some of the buildings included the Cancer and Genetics Research Complex and Emerging Pathogens Institute.
After the power was restored, Duke Energy and UF Facilities Services continued to check the system to ensure power stayed on, Sikes said.
WUFT tweeted the outage affected their offices in Weimer Hall and disrupted their radio services on channels 89.1, 90.1 and 102.7. ESPN’s Gainesville channel and 103.7 also went offline, according to the tweet.
UF Health Shands Hospital clinical areas were unaffected by the outage, said spokesperson Nickie Doria.
Matt Bizer, a UF chemical engineering senior, said he read a mass email from UF Housing and Residence Education before he left Orlando to go back to Gainesville Saturday morning.
Although he was concerned about unpacking in the dark, Bizer said his resident assistant texted him that the outage didn’t affect his dorm, the Keys Residential Complex.
“It was what I expected when I walked in, but it was relieving that it was resolved,” the 21-year-old said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated some residence hall's lost power. It is unknown which buildings lost power.
Contact staff writer Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @merylkornfield.
