Students who live in Richardson Court Association were plunged into darkness shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday when a breaker at the ISU Power Plant malfunctioned.

Power was eventually restored at about 12:20 a.m. Wednesday.

“There was a cable that had failed,” said Jeff Shearer, chief operator for the ISU Power Plant. “We isolated the problem and were able to put power back on.”

Breakers that run electricity for the university are “basically the same as those of a house, but as big as a car engine,” he said.

“We were able to reenergize the same section,” Shearer said.

Power from a different source on campus was rerouted to one RCA building, which he said he could not identify.

Restoring the electricity took two hours because of safety protocols, Shearer said.

“Diagnosing the problem takes some time,” he said.

Jeff Thompson, sophomore in pre-business, was playing basketball with friends at the rec when the power went out.

“I’m glad the workers had flashlights to help lead us out,” Thompson said. “But I’m kind of glad the lights went out when they did, because then other people couldn’t tell that I missed another shot.”

Lindsey Mick, sophomore in child and family services, had just left a house meeting when the lights went out.

“It was pretty exciting when the lights went out on Merchant floor,” she said. “We all kind of ran toward the emergency exits because that’s the only place there were lights in the building. I’m pretty grateful I have an alarm on my cell phone so I can actually wake up for my 8 a.m. nutrition class.”

The Department of Public Safety dispatched student officers to the darkened buildings to keep students calm.

DPS officials would not comment on the situation.

Department of Residence staff members tried to keep confused students calm and updated about the situation.

“I’ve basically just been passing along information to the resident advisers and the residents as we’ve been updated by various sources,” said Suzanne Harle, Oak-Elm Hall director.

Julie Maher, Miller House resident assistant, said she was “calming down my residents and seeing to their needs.”

“I’ve been keeping in contact with the hall director and giving my students advice about various ways to help them wake up for their class, ways to make phone calls and ways to deal with other problems they have faced because of the outage – including losing papers they were working on when the power went out,” said Maher, sophomore in civil engineering.