The north end of campus lost power for six hours on Saturday due to a transformer failure in Harbin Hall. The failure triggered electrical system safety mechanisms, which caused a power outage in surrounding buildings, according to Vice President of Planning and Facilities Management Robin Morey.

The transformers failed in Harbin at around 12:30 p.m., which caused power outages in Harbin, Gervase Building, Ryan and Mulledy Halls, New North, Dahlgren Chapel, half of Reiss Science Building, Davis Performing Arts Center and the Intercultural Center.

Planning and Facilities Management staff restored power by 6:30 p.m. to Gervase, Ryan and Mulledy, New North, Reiss, ICC and Dahlgren Chapel, according to Morey. Power in Harbin Hall and the PAC was not restored until past midnight on Sunday.

“As our team performed troubleshooting they were able to bring the other buildings back on line,” Morey wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Harbin is currently on temporary power until we procure and install a new building transformer.”

Although buildings lost power, all life-safety systems such as fire alarms, emergency lighting and sprinklers remained functional.

Harbin resident Julia Langan (SFS ’18) said that the lights returned in Harbin in the middle of the night, waking up many students.

“I know it was interesting for some people because the power came back on in the middle of night,” Langan said. “And so people whose lights had been flipped on when the power went out, at three in the morning or whenever the power came back on, everyone’s lights went on and woke everyone up.”

Harbin resident Celia Calano (COL ’18) said that although the Office of Facilities Management emailed students three times with updates, it failed to provide students with a reason for the outage.

 “I think that the school did a good job updating us to the best of their ability, but I think that we would have appreciated knowing what the problem was,” Calano said. “I don’t even know if the school knew what was going on, but there was a problem with one of the devices. But we weren’t told what it was. So it would have been nice to know what was wrong.”