Quad Residents Face Nearly 20-Hour Power Outage, Second Planned Outage

Utility disruptions in the Quad continued into last week, with a seven-hour water shutoff and a planned power outage following an Aug. 1 outage that left all three Quad Houses and the Student Organization Center at Hilles without power for nearly 20 hours.

The initial outage, which began at about 1 a.m. on Aug. 1, was the result of a shorted breaker in the basement of the SOCH, according to a Cambridge Fire Department incident report. City firefighters were called to the scene at 1:11 a.m. after smoke resulting from the shorted breaker triggered the building’s fire alarms.

Firefighters arrived on scene to find that, due to the power outage impacting the building’s electrical locks, they were initially unable to enter the SOCH or access the room where the breaker was located. By 1:48 a.m., they had entered the room and determined that the smoke had dissipated, although power remained out.

By 3 a.m., the CFD had left the Quad. Electricians were on site by 5:30 a.m., College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a statement, and power returned to the Quad at 8:30 p.m. the same day.

Less than two weeks later, Harvard conducted a second, planned outage impacting the Quad from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on August 13, to permit further maintenance on the main breaker in the SOCH, according to the Harvard University Information Technology webpage.

Palumbo wrote that there are no additional outages planned at this time.

As a result of the Aug. 1 outage, the three Quad Houses — Pforzheimer, Currier and Cabot — were left without lighting, hot water, or refrigeration for nearly a full day, causing some food to spoil as refrigerators thawed.

Many students living in the Quad for the summer found the loss of power inconvenient. During the summer, the Quad houses a number of students participating in research, summer term courses, and internships, in addition to student athletes and those with local summer jobs.

“I showered with cold water in the dark while getting ready for work,” Suin Lee ’28 wrote in a statement. “I had to use my phone flashlight at certain points. I was quite late to work!”

“It just got kind of annoying,” Ozioma C. Obi ’27 said. “I was just in the SOCH, just sitting all day, basically.”

Currier House residents were required to evacuate their building shortly after noon on the day of the outage and were not allowed back until power returned later that night. Palumbo wrote in a statement that Currier was evacuated in order to allow electrical teams to “work effectively” to resolve the outage.

Students who had to evacuate said they were unable to access personal items, while the lack of a clearly communicated timeline left some students uncertain about when they would be able to recover their belongings or return to the dorm.

“I didn’t think that the power outage would last all day. I had a meeting like a Zoom meeting at 4 p.m. that I just couldn’t go to because my computer died and I left my charger in my room,” Obi said.

“It was annoying,” Emma Kim ’28 said. “I had left in the morning, and then while I was gone, I got the email being like, okay, they’re asking everyone to vacate, and so when I came back from where I was, I wanted to drop off my stuff and grab my computer, but I couldn’t get back in.”

“It was kind of bizarre,” she added. “Kind of no explanation.”

Palumbo wrote in a statement that Harvard kept students informed throughout the outage.

“All information was shared with students in a timely manner and as it was available,” Palumbo wrote in a statement. “We are grateful to our teams and partners who worked collaboratively to ensure students were informed and power was restored as soon as was possible.”

The day following the outage, Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne organized a Ben and Jerry’s truck to come to the Quad, so that students impacted by the outage could receive free ice cream.

“I did get that,” Kim said. “That was pretty good.”

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.