Students and staff, and Pittsburg residents along Highway 4, lost power for several hours on Sept. 3 after an unexpected outage hit the area at around 10:30 a.m. The outage impacted 2,402 PG&E customers, including LMC. However, approximately 3,480 students enrolled in classes on Tuesday were forced to evacuate, along with faculty and staff.
For those on campus, it not only caused confusion when the classroom and office lights went out, but it also resulted in the college evacuating and closing for the rest of the day due to safety concerns.
“[It is stressful] because I’m a visual learner, so like we have homework due, and the homework was based on the notes that she [professor] was doing today,” said student Alicia Vasquez, who was in the middle of a statistics lecture when the power went out.
Not only did it interrupt classes, but other departments had to accommodate for the outage, like EOPS, located in the Student Services building.
“We still have limited access to resources to answer questions, and counseling appointments had to be moved from inside the offices to outside to a lighter area so they can communicate with students, not in the dark,” said EOPS Program Coordinator Andrew Murphy.
The LMC Marketplace and Cafeteria were affected as well.
Suzy Lee, the manager of the lunch room, was unsure of how to keep food from going bad once the power went out.
However, students who had not yet left campus were able to purchase the food already out with cash until they were eventually escorted out of the building.
Student Life Ambassador Edgar Sanchez said the food would be moved from the Pittsburg campus to the Brentwood campus, which was unaffected by the power outage.
“We’re trying to save as much as possible, so we’re moving it all to Brentwood,” said Sanchez.
Amid the chaos, President Pamela Ralston alerted the LMC community why the evacuation was necessary.
“I want to explain why we close when we are faced with an unanticipated and longer-term power outage. We are required by good leadership practices and law to prevent heat-related illnesses from occurring,” Ralston said in an email.
The temperature in Pittsburg was expected to be an excess of 95 degrees by mid afternoon. Ralston also instructed students and staff on what to do for their missed classes and work.
“Students should check their Canvas shell for information from their instructors. Instructional Faculty, please use Canvas to communicate with students for today. You may hold class virtually or offer an alternative assignment,” Ralston said.
During the evacuation, all parking lots began to experience traffic due to the high number of people leaving campus at the same time. Student Anijah Lee said she had to wait nearly 20 minutes to leave the parking space.
Although power was restored while people were still being evacuated, classes remained canceled and the Pittsburg campus was closed for the remainder of the day.
In an email, Ralston said, “PG&E restored power to the Pittsburg Campus at approximately noon, with some intermittent difficulties that may recur through the course of the day.”
The campus reopened on Sept. 4, with classes returning to their normal schedules. Classes at the Brentwood Campus were held as usual Tuesday.
Jordan Suisala, Darcy Meadows and Elizabeth Jacobo contributed to this report.
