Rain causes power outages throughout campus, Memorial Stadium

Power losses lasted from 15 to 90 minutes throughout campus.

By David Conway

Published Oct. 13, 2009

Heavy rain resulted in an extended power outage, among other things, during Thursday's football game at Memorial Stadium. The loss of power rendered the scoreboard and public address system unusable for the entirety of the game and resulted in the stadium gates being closed for more than 10 minutes about an hour before the game was scheduled to start.

The failure of a high voltage electric switch near the Tiger Team Store around 7 p.m. was the cause of the power outage, MU spokesman Christian Basi said. Campus officials believe some moisture might have gotten into the switch, causing the failure.

Basi said power returned to most of the stadium lights after 12 minutes, but the scoreboard and PA system could not be reactivated.

"They could not get power safely to the scoreboard in a short amount of time," Basi said. "They were able to reroute things to restore some power, but parts of the stadium remained unlit."

MU officials worked with city responders to bring in temporary lights for unlit areas for the remainder of the game, Basi said. The scoreboard and the Tiger Team store's power remained out until noon Friday.

Basi said the power outage affected the entire campus, though certain areas went without power for longer than others.

"There was a momentary power outage throughout the entirety of campus," Basi said. "In some cases, it was just a few minutes. In other cases, it lasted a bit longer. Fifteen buildings experienced a power outage for 60 to 90 minutes."

When the power was out at the field, the gates were closed, preventing anyone from entering the stadium between 6:52 p.m. and 7:06 p.m. Athletics Associate Director Whit Babcock said this was done primarily for safety and liability purposes.

"We don't want our fans in a position to potentially become injured or to jam too many people into the concourses of the stadium," Babcock said. "Our event staff just felt it was safer to close the gates and keep the other patrons out until we had a better feel for the cause of the situation and to keep everyone in as safe a situation as we could. Once power returned, we opened back up."

Tailgating also suffered as a result of the rain, Parking and Transportation Services Director Jim Joy said.

"The rain put a damper on pre-game activities and people wanting to tailgate and such," Joy said. "Some people did tailgate in parking structures, and we don't want to prohibit people from tailgating, but we have prohibited grills and generators after we had two car fires last year as a result of them."

Joy said transportation issues were less prominent.

"I think, because this game was so hyped up and because the media hyped up transportation issues for Thursday night, people made arrangements and tried to avoid travel near the stadium, which was good," Joy said.

Cooperation from students and faculty moving their vehicles from parking lots around Memorial Stadium helped the situation, Joy said.

"At 2 p.m. there were only two cars on the lots directly surrounding the stadium," Joy said.

For the most part, Babcock said, game day procedures went unchanged despite the weather.

"It was amazingly smooth, we were really pleased with it," Babcock said. "We were thrilled with our student turnout. For people to come out in that weather, we were pleased with it. From our end with things, not that we ever have a perfect game with 65,000 people attending, it went remarkably well."