The entire Tempe campus and surrounding areas were affected by a widespread power outage Thursday at about 5:20 p.m., University and power-company officials said.
The power was restored at approximately 6:10 p.m.
The power outage affected areas from Rio Salado Parkway to Broadway Road and from Mill Avenue to Rural Road, according to Arizona Public Service spokesman Damon Gross.
Mylar party balloons that tangled with a power line caused the outage, Gross said.
“We’ve got about 6,900 customers without service right now,” Gross said at about 5:30 p.m.
The APS substation for the area “lost the feed,” Gross said. A substation is where electricity comes in at a certain voltage and is stepped down to a lower voltage so it can be distributed to homes and businesses, Gross said.
APS officials were en route to the area substation at 5:40 p.m., Gross said.
Julie Newberg, an ASU spokeswoman, confirmed that University buildings were affected.
At about 5:25 p.m., Tempe firefighters pulled two students from an elevator on the fourth floor of Payne Education Hall. The students said they were stuck in the elevator for about 20 minutes.
Firefighters also carried a woman, who is paraplegic, down from the fourth floor of the Farmer Education Building.
The outage had effects beyond electricity failures in buildings.
Traffic-light signals were not functioning because of the power outage, but light-rail trains continued to run, a Metro light-rail spokeswoman said.
“We’re obeying the four-way stop rules and still following all the rules of the road,” Hillary Foose said during the time of the outage.
In the Mill Avenue District, business employees were glad the outage didn’t last longer. Chelsea Joscen, a manager at Cold Stone, said if the store had lost refrigeration for an extended amount of time, it would have lost its ice cream reserves. To deal with the fairly short outage, though, they were able to get by with keeping their freezer closed and only serving what was already displayed, she said.
“We were able to serve customers a majority of the time,” Joscen said, “but after a while, we had to stop serving people because there was nothing left [in the glass case].”
The store does not have any set procedure to deal with power outages, but Joscen said that could change.
“We’ve talked about maybe having a backup [generator],” she said.
