Animal cause of Thursday power outage

The University of New Hampshire and surrounding towns lost power Thursday morning for a period of approximately one hour and 15 minutes.


Paul Chamberlin, associate vice president of facilities, said that the power outage was due to the Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) system and was not a campus problem.


“We don’t really know what the immediate cause of the problem (is),” Chamberlin said Thursday evening.


According to Seacoastonline, an unknown animal caused an equipment malfunction and as a result, the power outage, at a PSNH substation in Durham.


Chamberlin said that it was possible that the power outage had spread as far as Newmarket.


The UNH Alert system sent an email to recipients at 10:49 a.m. informing them that the campus was without power and that PSNH and UNH were working to resolve the problem. A second alert was sent at 11:21 a.m. indicating that power had been restored and the UNH Police had issued an All-Clear.


The email alert also informed recipients that campus was not closed. Erika Mantz, director of Media Relations at UNH, told Seacoastonline that all activities continued as usual.


Chamberlain said that he and other facilities officials got power “back up as quickly as we could.”

Shortly after power was returned to campus, a small grease fire occurred in a horse barn on Mast Road, according to the Union Leader. One person was treated for smoke inhalation at the scene, Fire Chief Cory Landry told the Union Leader.


Firefighters then responded to an electrical fire in a maintenance area in Mills Hall, the Union Leader reported.