Power went out on campus at approximately 3 p.m. for about 50 minutes on Wednesday.

All of Center Parkway lost power after a transformer blew, Cosumnes River College officials confirmed from SMUD. Initially, the CRC staff was waiting to see if classes were to be cancelled due to estimates that power wouldn’t be available until at least 7 p.m.

Jique Bryant, a 27-year-old early childhood education major, has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized chair to get around. She was unable to get downstairs when the power went out because she couldn’t use the power ramp with her chair.

“I can’t get out of my chair so it would be difficult to get me down,” Bryant said. “I don’t like when people move me in my chair, it makes me uncomfortable because it causes me pain. The police said they were going to have to call the fire department to get me down.”

Rose Spisak, a faculty member who has worked in the Reading and Writing Center for about 10 years, said that this is the first time she’s experienced a power outage.

Original login times are autosaved, and as long as students log in and out manually when the power was out their time spent in the lab wouldn’t be lost, she said. She also pointed out that Microsoft Word has its own autosave feature.

In the cafeteria, Harold Hunter, 60-year-old evening cook, said that the cafeteria had to be shut down and secured.

“We ran all the customers out, so everybody’s out front,” he said. “We shut down everything.”

In case of future power outages, classrooms have Emergency Procedures manuals posted by doors.
Buildings are not to be evacuated until a decision is made by campus police or college administrators after consulting faculty, according to the manual. Furthermore, most classrooms have emergency lights that will turn on in the event of a power outage.

In the event of an elevator malfunction, occupants are to call and inform campus police so action can be taken for rescue and assistance of those trapped, according to the manual.

When power returned, classes resumed as normal.

Bryant said she was glad that the power went out so that people could be aware of issues people in motorized chairs would have in similar situations.