The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

Storm knocks out power at Upper School

UPDATED: Power was restored by 6:20 p.m..

A power outage struck two Upper School buildings at about 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday, leading to the loss of electricity for more than six hours in Chalmers and Weiler halls. These buildings, along with the traffic light at the main entrance, were the only areas affected.

The issue has left Munger, Seaver and the library unaffected but has still managed to disrupt classes. The lack of electricity interfered with planned lessons, and was an obstacle for teachers.

“The power outage made teaching in Chalmers extremely difficult,” remarked mathematics and Computer Science teacher Kevin Weis. “Classrooms on the south side of the building had almost no light. I had planned to use the projector in my Computer Science course and had to resort to writing some fairly complicated code on the board, which was obviously less than ideal. But we managed.”

While mostly math classes were affected on the upper floor, classes held on the lower floor, notably choir, were also affected.

“We had to try to sing and sight read in the dark in choir,” Abby Shaum ’16 said. “We ended up leaving early because it was pretty difficult to see without the use of our iPhones.”

The DWP has yet to issue an official statement on the exact cause of the situation, but a failed power line is suspect, rather than an on-campus electrical issue. The outage was a result of one of several El Niño storms that hit Los Angeles last week.

To see live weather radar of the storm moving through California, click here.

 

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Storm knocks out power at Upper School