Dillard, Barrett and Smith-Adams Halls were left without electricity and water during the arctic freeze that hit every county in Texas from Feb. 14-19.
During the week, the university remained opened with electricity still running through most facilities on the main campus.
Corey Ruff, assistant vice president for operations, said ACU was fortunate to still have power in the majority of the buildings.
“We were fortunate to maintain electrical service on campus but the way the grid is set up there are different circuits,” Ruff said. “This time we lost power west of Campus Ct. and on the north end of the campus.”
Because of these different circuits the three residence halls were affected by the blackouts differently than the rest of the campus.
“Dillard and Barrett are on the same circuit; Smith-Adams is on a totally separate circuit, so power was off and on at different times,” Ruff said. “Unfortunately due to the rolling blackouts, the power was turned off and wasn’t restored for three days.”
Although the university does not have its own power source or back-up generation, Ruff said he speculates that the campus retained power because of its close proximity to other necessary electrical circuits.
“It could be attributed to the fire station located on EN 16th,” Ruff said. “Oftentimes they will not shut the circuits down to fire stations, police stations and hospitals so by the grace of God we were on that circuit and it helped us maintain power on campus. Fortunately we had adequate space so we could move students around and get them to warm places.”
Shannon Kaczmarek, director of residence life, said that the temperature was monitored at 10 a.m. after the power shut off that Monday morning.
“Around 2 p.m. we emailed out to students and invited them to seek residence outside of that residence hall,” Kaczmarek said. “We lifted the no-guest policy to allow them to have friends who needed a place to stay as well as open up temporary housing if they didn’t know anybody to stay with. Many students wanted to stay, especially since the temperatures were not that low yet.”
She said that when ResLife realized the power had not returned to the residence halls on Tuesday, they emailed residents to move out and seek temporary housing on campus due to unsafe living conditions.
During this period she said students were allowed to eat at the Bean regardless of their meal plans and the university took measures to find clean drinking and potable water, having to collect water from office jugs, supplies of water bottles around the campus and pumping water from the pond outside of the Hunter Welcome Center.
Ruff said the only places where ACU couldn’t maintain electricity were those three residence halls, the football stadium and the track, softball and soccer field houses.
