As the sun sets in Texas technological campus in Lubbock, Texas, days before the university was ready for the spring vacation, pillars of green fire broke out from the earth.
This, combined with explosions heard from the campus on Wednesday night and the Power Power’s substation was demolished offline, caused a broad interruption of power supply throughout the campus.
Others read: Texas Tech University closes campus before spring vacation after explosion triggered fires
This displaced students from their hostels or dream areas, forcing the campus on an early spring break and leaving the authorities, campus staff and utility crews with two main tasks: determining what happened and repairing the damage.
As the sun rose the next day, emergency crews could still be seen working on the campus, with portions still remaining in the dark.
This event has led several employees of Texas Tech and City of Lubbock to create a time line of events, provide updates on power restoration and some view of preliminary findings.
Officials launch a TEXAS TECH EXPLOSIONS preliminary time line, fires
Captain Amy Ivy said the Texas Police Department began receiving calls around 6:40 pm Wednesday, March 12, reporting interruptions in the campus power supply.
Matt Rose, Chief Public Affairs, Lubbock Power & Light, said that just a few minutes later, the LP & L system noticed a defect in one of the chains that serve the northern and eastern campus and automatically cut off the power to it.
About 17 minutes later, Ivy said that these initial calls change in smoke messages coming out of human lines around the campus engineer’s key – north of the memorial circle.
“After our officers reacted, they saw Dima and some fire coming out of the shaft,” Ivy said. “At that time, they turned to the Texas Fire Marshall and the Lubbock Fire Service to react on the spot.”
The university then sent a signal to the entire campus around 19:12, informed students, teachers and employees that the campus was experiencing several power outages. About 18 minutes later, the university issued an evacuation order for its engineering key.
Videos and photos posted on social media showed pillars of green fire, cracked from hats from different places around the campus.
Around 7:30 pm, Rose said additional chains began to travel automatically on the campus, affecting 123 meters.
“At 20:00 … We started to download the chains manually,” Rose said. “Again, as a preventative measure to make sure we keep the area. This is one of the first things to do so that the next steps can be held.”
However, the 3,449 LP & L customers were affected in Lubbock, but crews were able to quickly restore their power.
Those on the campus also said they were listening to an explosion from the LP & L Brandon substation on the campus, which caused huge interruptions from the university and its sister campus on the other side of the street – the TTU Health Science Center.
Rose confirmed that the substation was set on fire at one time at night; However, an investigation is being conducted.
“(C) Midnight, our crews have been able to start entering very specific shafts to start restoring power,” Rose said. “By 3 o’clock in the morning we restored every meter that was able to be restored.”
At 2 pm on Thursday, Rose said, the authorities were restored in 60% of the campus, with the force in the other 40% being detained until the crews were safe to do so.
Nick Wilson, an assistant chief of the Lyubbok fire rescue, said crews still see residual indication of natural gas from the previous evening in the underground arches around the campus that saw the fires.
LFR is still working to ventilate these areas and check that they are safe before the LP & L crews are able to enter them, evaluate the damage and work to recover, since the vaults contain parts of the university’s power network.
“I can’t tell you how long it will take,” Wilson said.
Investigation underway to cause damage to Texas Tech Campus
Officials have confirmed that the state fire marshal is conducting the investigation, with Wilson assuring the public on Thursday that the campus is safe and there are no signs of active fire.
Wilson said the different colors of fire and smoke are probably due to different materials that break into different colors when burned.
“These were electric arches, underground electrical equipment with, probably metal fires,” Wilson said. “Copper burns green. We probably saw each other there.”
It is not clear until Thursday why natural gas was discovered during the incident, Wilson said.
As for the energy infrastructure in the campus, Rose said that LP & L crews support it regularly, noting that crews were on campus a week before focusing on maintenance efforts on other parts of the system.
Rose also said that the extreme time of Lubbok is the culprit why he can fail.
“Many times a storm will occur and this will cause damage, but it does not have to cause sufficient damage to cause interruption, so we will not have an indication in our region that (problems) there,” Rose said. “Then a week to 10 days later this transformer fails.”
By Thursday, officials said there was no estimated date on when the full capus power would be restored; However, students are on the spring vacation until March 24.
Impact on Texas Tech
The fires and interruptions of the power supply force Texas Tech employees to close the campus on Thursday and Friday, which also made them start the spring vacation two days earlier than expected.
Texas Tech President Lawrence Shovanek said he and his team decided early during the incident that the campus would send students home early.
With Paramount for the safety of students, Texas Tech’s chief financial officer Noel Sloan said students were encouraged to leave Thursday morning to take advantage of daylight. Sloan also said that the university is working to accommodate these students, displaced from their hostels, putting many in hotels if they were staying on the campus for the vacation.
“We are also working on moving the campaign to the campus to the subway, which were scheduled for the spring break,” Sloan said.
The Brooks & Dunn Concert, which was supposed to happen on Thursday at the Arena of United Supermarkets Arena, was postponed until March 20, as Schovanec said the arena was working to return and operate its HVAC system.
Texas Tech Athletics was also ready to host a NCAA Selection Sunday Watch party in the arena; However, this is in the air now.
Without a specific timeline to restore power in the remainder of the campus and the unknown degree of damage, Schovanec said the university was detained, deciding whether to meet the students back to the campus after the break.
“First, we have to hear from the experts about what the timeline will be and we will probably know more in a few days,” Shovanek said. “Based on their contribution, we will begin to pursue these discussions.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech provides details of fires overnight, explosion in campus