UMD power outage enters day 3, classes moved off campus

University of Maryland students and staff spent a third day dealing with a campus-wide power outage that shut down the College Park campus, forced classes off site and sent crews to help people trapped in elevators. The outage began at about 3 p.m. Saturday, June 20, and UMD said it stemmed from an underground fault.

The university kept the campus open, but the outage changed daily operations across one of Prince George’s County’s largest institutions. UMD said some classes scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were relocated because of the electrical problem, and its alerts told students and instructors in summer classes to keep checking email for updates. Officials also said some buildings would remain without power for one or more days because of the complexity of the issue, a delay that showed how a single infrastructure failure can ripple through a research university’s classrooms, offices and housing.

Safety concerns quickly became part of the story. UMD alerts said Facilities Management staff were on site assessing the situation while crews were dispatched to people stuck in elevators. The university also directed people with mobility impairments or disabilities to contact the University of Maryland Police Department for egress assistance and to call 911 for any life-safety issue. For on-campus residents, the alerts said targeted communications would continue as the outage stretched on.

By Tuesday evening, June 23, UMD said power had been fully restored to the campus. The university said operations were scheduled to return to normal on Wednesday, June 24, except for a small number of relocated courses. A later UMD summary said Facilities Management crews completed restoring power to all buildings on Tuesday, showing that restoration unfolded in stages rather than all at once.

The outage raised a larger question for College Park: how a fault underground could take so long to clear on a major public campus with backup systems and a large maintenance operation. For students trying to keep summer classes on schedule, for residents waiting for normal service to return, and for staff trying to keep a sprawling university functioning, the three-day disruption was a blunt test of how quickly UMD could recover when the lights went out.