Several buildings on South and Central Campus lost power Wednesday afternoon due to an underground electrical vault explosion near Clark Street.
The explosion occurred at approximately 12:25 p.m. in an alley near 555 Clark St. No injuries were reported and there was no damage to buildings, University Relations Vice President Alan Cubbage said.
Power was restored to all affected buildings by 4:14 p.m., Commonwealth Edison spokesperson Pam Anton said, although she could not confirm that there was an explosion in the underground electrical vault. According to a university statement, the campus building at 1800 Sherman Ave. will remain closed due to equipment problems related to fire safety.
Many campus buildings lost power Tuesday night at 11 p.m. due to the failure of a Commonwealth Edison power line, according to Cubbage.
Anton said that today’s outage was caused by problems with “a backup circuit that was affected from the restoration effort of last night’s outage.”
Tuesday night’s power loss hit South Campus buildings such as 1835 Hinman, PARC and East and West Fairchild, as well as buildings further north such as SPAC. Power was restored by about 12:30 a.m.
“We work to restore our customers and we can’t anticipate that those things will happen in the future,” Anton said.
Amanda Litman contributed reporting.