The University of Maryland, College Park has restored heat and hot water to more than 100 buildings after frigid temperatures caused outages twice in two days.
Leaders encouraged students to leave campus during the second outage, which lasted overnight and impacted residence halls and dining halls. Now, according to an email sent to the campus community Thursday afternoon, heat and hot water are back.
But university officials wrote that because very cold temperatures are expected to continue through this weekend, there may be more “intermittent outages.”
The university first announced outages Wednesday morning, then said they’d fixed the issue a few hours later. Problems resurfaced in the evening, as temperatures plunged. The university, which was supposed to start its spring semester this week, has canceled classes through Friday.
In an email on Thursday, the university’s vice president and chief administrative officer wrote that later this year, a new permanent central energy plant would become operational, which will make “a more resilient, sustainable and reliable system to heat and cool” campus facilities.
During the outage, dining halls reduced their hours and limited their menus because cooking equipment was affected. Staff, according to an email sent to students, gathered extra blankets and created warming centers in residence halls.
“We know that not all students are able to leave campus,” a message to students read. “Resident Life and Residential Facilities staff remain available and are actively coordinating support for students who need to stay on campus.”
Students remaining on campus were urged to stay indoors as much as possible, keep windows closed, wear layers, stay dry and not light candles or use unapproved heating devices.
“With an event of this magnitude, the top priority is the safety of staff — both university employees and contractors — working in extremely cold conditions,“ Bob Pils, the university’s executive director of facilities management, building and landscape maintenance, wrote in an emailed statement to The Banner earlier this week. “That includes ensuring they have adequate breaks to warm up.”
Pils said that his team, in an effort to protect buildings from the extreme cold, makes sure that all spaces on campus have closed windows and thermostats set appropriately to reduce heat loss and manage energy usage.
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