A buried power line was cut Wednesday during construction of the Marysville High School Football stadium. The accident cut power to the high school as well as the transportation and maintenance facility and some athletic fields. Classes at the school were dismissed early because of the outage.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Mac Cordell)
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Students are back in school today at Marysville High School after an early dismissal Wednesday.
Classes at the high school were dismissed at 11:45 a.m. Wednesday. A mishap as part of the district’s stadium construction project cut power to the building about 10:20 a.m. The power was also out at the district’s transportation and maintenance facility as well as on the baseball scoreboard.
“The Early College building went out for just a second, than then came back on,” Mankins said.
Power was restored at the high school building about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday. Mankins said power has not yet been restored at the transportation and maintenance facility or the scoreboard.
“We are hoping those will be restored later today,” Mankins said.
The superintendent explained that contractors working on the high school football stadium cut a power line.
“It is the responsibility of the general contractor to have all lines marked,” Mankins said. “They had some lines marked, but obviously not all of them.”
She said district officials have already spoken with representatives from the general contractor, Altman Construction.
“We need to make sure that is done in the future,” Mankins said.
She said there were some costs associated with the outage, “but we will turn those over to the contractor.”
The costs largely had to do with transportation associated with closing early.
A release and a phone message were sent to parents informing them of the outage, the early release and transportation options as well as an alternate phone number if they needed to get information to the high school.
“Everyone is safe and has been in class since the outage,” the release assured parents.
Mankins explained that about 11 a.m., when the decision was made to release early, district officials were told it would be at least 90 minutes before power could be returned. She said it would be at least an hour after that before lunches could be prepared.
“There just wasn’t time,” Mankins said.
In addition to the lunches, Mankins said there were “safety factors for staff and students to think about.”
She said the phone system was not working and the building’s emergency lighting was running out of power.
“Feeding them is important, but safety is our ultimate factor,” Mankins said.
Mankins said the outage was different from the one that closed school in late September. She said at that time an older electric line, “just failed.”
She said this time, “some actually cut the line” as part of the construction. Mankins explained the buried line was 30 years old and was not protected inside a conduit.
While officials were not happy about the outage, they were pleased with the response of students and staff.
“Everything went really well for dismissing the largest building in the district,” Mankins said. “Everyone was calm and patient and went as well as it could.”