Storm disrupts campus utilities

Students who stayed on campus for spring break had a wet and windy start to their vacations. The Nor’easter on Saturday, March 13, brought 70 mph wind gusts and six inches of rain to central New Jersey, snapping trees, closing roads, and causing electrical and hot water outages for some University buildings.

Though the University responded by issuing alerts about outages and road closures and opening a temporary shelter in Dillon Gymnasium, some have raised questions about significant delays in the communications response.

Power outages and road closures

Graduate student and faculty residences at Hibben and Magie, Lawrence, College Road and Springdale apartments lost both power and hot water from March 13 to 15, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said in an e-mail.

Bloomberg Hall, the only undergraduate dormitory affected, lost hot water, while Stanworth and Dean Mathey apartments experienced partial power outages.

Dillon Gymnasium opened as a temporary shelter on the evening of March 14, offering sleeping space and hot water, as well as linens, toiletries, pillows, chairs and air mattresses to campus residents and local University members who were experiencing power and hot water outages because of the storm, Cliatt explained.

“More than 75 people made use of the shower/restroom facilities at Dillon from Sunday into Monday, although only five individuals at the most chose to stay the night in the upstairs fitness room,” she said.

Cliatt said the housing department “was in immediate contact” with the residents of buildings affected by the outages.

However, Graduate Student Government president Kevin Collins GS said in an e-mail that residents of Lawrence Apartments did not receive any University e-mails until the evening of March 14 due to a technical error.

At that point, the University used the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System to report outages, road closures and the temporary shelter arrangements to the entire University community.

Cliatt said that the alert was sent when the University realized that outages would last longer than expected.

Power had been restored to all buildings on campus, except for Springdale Apartments, by March 15, Cliatt added.

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Power outages extended beyond campus, with around 2,000 Township residents and 500 Borough residents still without power on the morning of March 15, according to reports from CentralJersey.com.

In addition to the power and hot water outages, heavy winds also knocked down roughly 80 to 100 trees or large branches across campus, Cliatt said. Fallen trees blocked sections of major roads, including Alexander Street, Washington Road and Harrison Street. A section of Alexander Street remained closed until March 15, after a fallen tree knocked down power lines.

A tree also fell across Washington Road on March 14, knocking down a traffic signal and narrowing the street to one lane, leading to “exceedingly slow” traffic into campus, Cliatt said.

All University buildings now have power, and all roads near campus are now open.

Criticisms of University response

Collins said that the University should have communicated more closely with graduate students.

Though he noted that the University should be commended for working “very long and hard hours attempting to mitigate and repair the storm damage as quickly as possible,” he said that its “emergency communications procedures failed in multiple ways.”

Collins said that graduate students should have been notified of transportation problems, noting that the closure of College Road made it difficult to drive between the Graduate College and the rest of campus, since Mercer Street was already closed for repairs.

Some graduate students did not receive e-mail alerts, since power outages shut down Internet access in some areas of campus, Collins said. Though some fliers were posted midday on March 15, the University did not send out text alerts until around 8 p.m. that evening, he added.

“This is a problem, since graduate students are often known to come to their laboratories and offices on campus, even on weekends and even during spring break, but especially when there is power on campus but not at one’s home,” he said. “This omission was not for lack of information, since the road closures were also posted on the Facilities’ outages website.”

The GSG had to “step into the breach and provide essential information to the graduate student body,” he added.

Much of the information the University did provide to graduate students about the power outages was also inconsistent with what actually happened, Collins said.

Aronson, however, said that many of the communication delays resulted from misinformation about the nature of the outage.

“The University is relying on information from local utilities and municipalities” in storm situations like this one, Aronson explained, and no one knew that the electrical and hot water shortages would be so severe.

“Initially, we thought that the outage would be short-term, lasting only a day,” Aronson said, explaining that the University consequently did not think it necessary to send out traffic information or storm-related updates on March 13. “As soon as it became evident” that the storm and the electrical problems were more serious, she noted, the University worked through the weekend to inform students and posted paper notices at affected areas, as well as announcements on its website on Sunday.

“That was an evolving situation as the storm intensified over the weekend,” Aronson explained. “[Our efforts were] trying to encompass the latest updates, as well as trying to convey to employees who might be traveling to work Monday about road closures that could potentially affect their route.”

Yet the GSG thinks that the University should look to improve its response efforts for future weather emergencies, Collins said.

“There remain a variety of open questions about the University’s response to the power outage, and the communications during and after the storm,” he explained. “We are looking forward to working with the University in the weeks to come to establish more effective and robust emergency communications practices.”

State-wide impact

Some travelers leaving campus were also delayed by the storm.

New Jersey Transit shut down Dinky service for several days, replacing the train with a bus shuttle, and several other train lines were also suspended.

On March 13, a 500-passenger train traveling from New York’s Penn Station to Trenton was delayed for more than five hours when the overhead power lines were shut down by a fallen tree, The Star-Ledger reported.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency on March 14, granting state police the power to order evacuations and control traffic and access to flooded areas.