By Brandon Marshall
Power has been restored to campus after an outage Wednesday afternoon.
A construction worker struck an underground power line behind the Center of the Arts on Williamson Avenue. The strike caused an energy build-up that ran to the nearest power pole. Electrical sparks from the fuse on the power pole landed on pine needles and caused a small fire.
Photo courtesy of Junior Jonathan Smith
Director of Campus Safety and Police Chuck Gantos was outside at the time and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. Gantos alerted the fire department afterwards.
Most of campus lost power and students were temporarily left without swipe access. Sophomore Maneula Mbouma was working in Moseley when the power went out and was thankful for the backup generator.
Dave Scanzoni from Duke Energy says the power outage affected 2300 customers around town.
