The American River College campus community experienced a power outage across the campus on Sept. 2 due to the effects of a windstorm. According to Kaitlyn Collignon, ARC’s public information officer, the outage primarily affected the STEM building, health and education, the Portable Village, the physical education/gym area, the Learning Resource Center and Raef Hall. The library was also temporarily affected. SMUD confirmed that the outage was directly affected by this storm, as it also affected the surrounding community with about 13,500 people losing power. According to a SMUD representative, the power to the campus was restored around 11:30, just in time for the later classes of the day. However, the campus was still recovering throughout the day from the events of that morning. 

This sudden weather hazard created operating issues for those who were in the middle of their classes, particularly because the morning is a populated time for class attendance, meaning many were affected. The power initially went out at about 9:45, leaving students and staff literally in the dark. As more people entered campus for the day, they could notice the blown-down branches and scattered debris of trees as evidence of the morning storm.

Alex McGilvray is an electrical engineering major at ARC, and one of the students attending his morning class in the upper level of the STEM building, where he experienced the outage. 

“We were in the middle of a lesson, luckily we were just using the whiteboard, so we didn’t have to worry about anything but the moment the power went out, the teacher just gave us our break,” McGilvray said. “I think the power went out at 9:53 and came back about 11:20, so over an hour.”

In addition to the effects the outage had on morning classes, the event also caused many other classes of the day to be cancelled. Signs were posted on some classrooms including in Raef Hall, stating the cancellation due to the unexpected nature of the power outage as well as the kind of effect it would have on the normal operations of classrooms and their equipment. 

Along with class cancellations, some cars parked in staff parking lots had reported damage as a result of the strong weather.

“I was in total darkness. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, and couldn’t get out of the staff room,” said J. R. Matsunami, ARC’s women’s basketball coach. “I came to my 10:30 class, which is a cardio circuit class, and we can’t lift in the dark. I had to cancel my 10:30 class. I came back to the staff area, and everyone was clamoring around the cars that are parked in the staff area because the branches came down.”

The cars known to be affected were parked in front of the gymnasium and the child education center buildings.

The Current Staff contributed to this report.