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300 students nearly displaced from dorms Wednesday

If the power had not turned back on — which it did, just after 7 p.m. after a three-hour outage — students would have gone to the basement of Cobb Residence Hall for relocation assignments.

“When the power goes down, the internet is down, there is no lighting in the building, and sprinkler and electrical systems are all connected from a power source ... it is not safe for students to remain,” Rick Bradley, associate director of housing and residential education, said.

Bradley said students were told to go to Cobb for reassignments because it had a space big enough in case all affected students were to come. The outage affected four dorms in Olde Campus Upper Quad: Ruffin, Grimes, Manly and Mangum.

“The challenge that we have is that it always depends on the number of students affected. As the other night kind of indicated when it was isolated to about four of our residence halls and about 300 students, that’s certainly easier to manage than if it was campuswide,” Bradley said.

Allan Blattner, director of housing and residential education, said most students prefer to find their own places to stay if they are being relocated.

Bradley said if students need to be relocated, they are assigned to empty rooms on campus. He said most dorms on campus have back-up generators and would not be affected by a power outage.

The buildings without backup generators are Old East, Old West, Grimes, Magnum, Manly, Ruffin, Aycock, Everett, Graham, Lewis, Stacy, Spencer and Odum Village, Bradley said.

Blattner said power outages are also unlikely because power lines are underground.

“Thankfully, most of our areas are serviced by underground lines which helps in terms of maintaining a more consistent supply of power,” Blattner said.

Shortly after the message was sent to students about relocation, the power was restored, said Christopher Payne, associate vice chancellor for student affairs and senior operating officer.

“One of the things that we were getting particularly concerned about, with the timing, was that it was beginning to get dark outside,” Payne said.

The emergency lights in residence halls have batteries in case of a power outage, but Payne said they were beginning to go out.

Payne said the housing department works with the Department of Public Safety to ensure student safety when similar incidents occur.

“We evaluate things and think we could do them better, but I’m proud of the team and the University’s response,” Blattner said.

university@dailytarheel.com

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