May 3 – Around 8:40 a.m., Green River students found themselves unexpectedly in the dark. Due to high winds, a large tree collapsed over the power lines directly in front of the east entrance to the college, causing a campus-wide power outage.
Wind speeds reached over 25 mph with occasional gusts up to 40 mph throughout the day. Campus Safety had warned students the day before about the high winds through a post on their twitter page (GRCCSafety) stating, "Wind advisory for Auburn in effect until 7:00 p.m. Monday".
However, due to previous occurrances of high winds on the Green River campus with no other emergency incidences, this power outage came as a shock to students.
A.J. Singh was in his economic class when the blackout originally hit. "I was pretty surprised when the power went out," he said.
Even though the backup generators were able to maintain some lighting in several classrooms and the Technology Center (TC), classes on the Auburn campus were cancelled originally just until 3 p.m., but later campus officials decided to cancel evening classes, as well, after examining the full severity of the electrical incident.
As students attempted to leave campus at 10 a.m. once classes were officially cancelled, a large traffic jam occurred throughout all of the on-campus parking lots. When the east entrance was blocked off, hundreds of students fled to their cars in attempts to leave through the west entrance. Unfortunately for those stuck in the back parking lots, this congestion didn't lighten up for over an hour.
"They handled it pretty well," Singh said of the traffic jam, "but I was almost late for work because I had to wait in traffic for 45 minutes to leave."
The best thing for students to take away from today is not an extra day of procrastination on their homework. In larger-scale emergencies, students should now recognize that they need to listen to campus safety instructions and remember that leaving campus quickly is almost impossible.
Students should understand emergency procedures and look at today as fire drill for the future.
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