Outage Followup: School’s power only down for an hour

A power outage that affected many Saratoga buildings, including the school, occurred at 7:52 PM, according to PG&E, on the night of Tuesday, Oct. 19. According the principal Paul Robinson, the outage was caused by a tree falling onto a transformer, which went up in flames on Herriman Avenue. SHSTV reported that a transformer on Herriman caught fire and later exploded.

A power outage that affected many Saratoga buildings, including the school, occurred at 7:52 PM, according to PG&E, on the night of Tuesday, Nov. 19. According the principal Paul Robinson, the outage was caused by a tree falling onto a transformer, which went up in flames on Herriman Avenue. SHSTV reported that a transformer on Herriman caught fire and later exploded.

Students at school during the outage were confused by the sudden event.

“All of a sudden, the turf lights went out,” said senior Nikhil Goel, who was leaving soccer practice. “[In the parking lot] we saw sparks fly out of a transformer on a telephone pole. Then it exploded into flames, maybe 10-20 feet high.”

PG&E was called immediately to fix the situation.

Because the school had an hour of backup power stored in the IT room, school Wi-Fi was not taken down, said Julie Grenier, manager of information services. A few Saratoga employees were working in the dark throughout the outage.

School resumed the following day. According to principal Paul Robinson, school would have only been cancelled if the outage presented a safety issue. Assistant Principal Kerry Mohnike said school is not usually cancelled during power outages.