Electricity was back to normal yesterday after a PG&E equipment failure shut off power on the west side of the Parnassus campus for most of Monday.

One of two PG&E power sources feeding the campus failed around 4:30 a.m. Monday, shutting down computers, laboratory equipment and many other work necessities in the Medical Sciences building, Health Sciences towers, and in structures west of those buildings. Electricity flowed for about 15 minutes around noon before it was lost again. Power was not fully restored until nearly 5 p.m. that day.

Generators and the campus’ own power plant supplied enough electricity for emergency lighting in the affected buildings and to keep the animal care facilities running.

The east side of Parnassus, including Moffitt and Long hospitals, and the north, including the Ambulatory Care Center and Millberry Union, are fed by a different PG&E source and did not lose electricity. When the campus loses PG&E-supplied power, it must allocate its limited supply from generators and the campus power plant, said Mike Goff, UCSF’s utilities manager. Hospital patient care, for example, is the first priority, and areas requiring emergency power and those housing animals are high on the list. A new power plant now under construction and scheduled for completion in November will increase the campus’ power supply.

Monday’s shutdown, he said, required creative measures to save cell cultures and other laboratory experiments that rely on refrigeration. Five tons of dry ice and two tons of wet ice were shipped to the campus Monday. The ice was hauled from the loading dock behind the fifth floor of the Nursing Building to the labs.

1st appeared 7/23/97