by Rena Ketelsen – Last Saturday the power went out for a few hours, and on Thursday there was a gas leak.
At about 9 am on Thursday, Sept. 22, a contractor hit one of the gas lines supplying Charles City College Hall which caused a gas leak. As a result, a few buildings on campus needed to be evacuated.
To avoid any danger because of the flammability that the gas has, a few buildings were evacuated. Due to the wind, these buildings included Charles City College Hall, Klinger-Neal Theater, and a part of Roadman Hall.
The gas leak was fixed within the next hour.
Aleks Sadowska, a senior, was supposed to have a class in Charles City College Hall when the gas leak happened. Her class met outside of the building instead.
“I walked to the library to see if my class was there and then I first smelled the gas. I could smell it around Lewis Hall and Roadman [Hall] as well,” she said.
The power outage happened on Saturday, Sept. 17, at about 11 am and was caused by a hawk. The hawk interfered with a transformer.
The power outage affected Roadman Hall, Hindman-Hobbs Center, the apartments on campus, Rosen Verdoorn Sports Center, Elwood Olsen Stadium, Lillian E. Dimmitt Residence Hall, and surrounding houses in the area.
The outage was fixed within three hours by MidAmerican Energy.
The Director of Safety and Security Brett Lyon explained, “MidAmerican Energy is required to come out and do the repairs for the gas line as well as the power outage.”
He added that MidAmerican Energy was already dealing with another issue in a different part of the city when the power outage happened. Therefore, it took a while for them to respond and fix the problem on campus.
According to Lyon, there are no further long-term effects of dangers from the power outage or from the gas leak.
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