Power outage trips UCT
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 13:31
- Written by Pasqua Heard
A city-wide power outage brought UCT to a standstill at 11am on Wednesday 28 September for about an hour. Masses of students covered Jammie steps as their lectures and tutorials were cancelled.
This is not the first power outage to occur in Cape Town this week.
Jolene Henn, Eskom Communications Manager, explained the cause of the power outage: “The 400 KV line tripped as there was a broken conductor on the line. There was another line which was out due to it needing maintenance work. But this was brought back to restore the supply.”
The power outage caused people to be stuck in various lifts around campus. It also prevented students from using all online sites. “I was unable to make use of JStor to do my research for my project,” said Amelia Sargeant, a Media student.
Chaos broke out in the computer labs. Jacqueline Hart-Davies, a second-year Commerce student making use of the Leslie Commerce computer labs, said, “I was typing up a marketing assignment due at midday, but then the power cut. This stressed me out. But thanks to autosave, none of my work got lost.”
Power was restored to UCT at midday, although it was restored later to other areas around Cape Town.