Students describe various experiences after parts of West Campus, Medical Center lose power Monday afternoon

Emergency lights were used to power several buildings, including Perkins Library and the Bryan Center, due to power outages.
Emergency lights were used to power several buildings, including Perkins Library and the Bryan Center, due to power outages.

The WiFi was down and the lights were off on a very unexpected afternoon Monday, as Duke experienced a  power outage on parts of West Campus and the Medical Center.

Starting at around 3 p.m., the lights in the Brodhead Center, Bryan Center and Perkins Library shut off. Shortly after, emergency alarms went off in the Brodhead Center and people were told to leave the building, with the other locations’ occupancies unaffected.



According to employees who work at the various eateries in the Brodhead Center, the stoves—which were left burning as people moved outside—set off smoke alarms as well.



Power was restored around half an hour later, per a 3:29 p.m. DukeALERT to the community.

The short outage affected students to varying degrees, from not at all to having their classes canceled.

First-year Ethan Rehder was one of those students whose day was completely unimpacted by the outage. 

“The extent of my experience was getting two notifications on my phone and seeing one of my friends say something about it on Discord,” wrote Rehder.

Approximately 150 students got lucky—or unlucky—with their ECON 101 class ending early because of the outage.

“I was in Griffith Theater [in the Bryan Center] during my economics class when it happened,” said Nathan Yang, a first-year. “We had to cancel class early and the WiFi also stopped working for some reason.”

Junior Jakobe Bussey was completely oblivious to the situation until he asked, jokingly, about the people standing outside of the Brodhead Center.

“I was walking outside after my class and there was a whole crowd of individuals outside of the [Brodhead Center],” Bussey said. “I was walking, talking with a friend and basically I decided to crack a joke and ask why everyone was standing outside. But turns out, everyone was standing outside because all the power was out in the [Brodhead Center].”

As he arrived at his next class, the power still hadn’t come back. He described the scene in the Reuben-Cooke building as one out of a “horror movie,” with students “waiting in the hallways like zombies.”

“[People] weren’t really aware of what was going on,” Busey said.

“When I finally reached my class, the power had been out for a while, so we're kind of worried that we're able to have [class],” he added. “But then, it magically turned back on. A miracle from God, basically.”

First-years Will Haddad and Sofia Bliss-Carrascosa had fairly tight schedules and both of them wanted to grab lunch during the time that the power outage lasted. 

Bliss-Carrascosa was in her 1:45 p.m. class in Perkins Library when the outage began.

“We kept working for 10 minutes on a hotspot and then when class ended we left,” Bliss-Carrascosa said. “ … I went to the [Brodhead Center] because I planned to get lunch between my [1:45 p.m. class] ending and my [3:30 p.m. class] starting. But because the power was out, I couldn’t buy anything.”

So, she headed to East Campus for her 3:30 p.m. class, where she “barely got time to grab a banana and chips” from her dorm.

Haddad also planned to have lunch after his 1:45 p.m. class—at McDonald’s in the Bryan Center. 

“After my class ended at 3 p.m., I had a date with McDonald’s,” Haddad said in the spirit of Valentine’s Day. “It was on my mind all class, but I was stood up … I did not get my double quarter pounder today.”


Adway S. Wadekar profile
Adway S. Wadekar | News Editor

Adway S. Wadekar is a Trinity junior and former news editor of The Chronicle's 119th volume.

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