Dr. Postel thanks Physical Plant employees for their work on quickly restoring power to campus in early February.
Dr. Postel thanks Physical Plant employees for their work on quickly restoring power to campus in early February.

The lights went out across much of the Belknap Campus on Feb. 2 when a backhoe hit a major line. At first glance, it didn’t look like an easy repair. Some even worried it could take months.

The full restoration is still not complete. It may not be until June or July. Nevertheless, campus has power and operations are running as if nothing happened. Physical Plant is to thank for that. When the initial outage happened, the Physical Plant team worked throughout the night to get everything back on track.

Classes were back in session by 10 a.m. the next morning, well ahead of projections. It was a beat-the-odds effort.

On Feb. 23, Interim President Greg Postel, COO Lee Smith and CAO David Adams held an event for the Physical Plant Department to show appreciation for their hard work. The administrators hope to host more of these types of events in the future; though hopefully not stemming from a major power outage.

SHARE
Alicia Kelso
Alicia Kelso is the director of social media and digital content. She joined UofL in 2015 as director of communications at the Brandeis School of Law. She also serves as a senior contributor at Forbes.com, writing about the restaurant industry, which she has covered since 2010. Her work has been featured in publications around the world, including NPR, Bloomberg, The Seattle Times, Good Morning America and Franchise Asia Magazine.