GA spokesman Steve Valandra said today that GA has hired D Hittle and Associates of Lynnwood and costs could run “between $400,000 and $500,000,” including a custom made electrical switch that would need to be replaced in an underground vault. This could require several months.
“We’re working on a report with this consultant to find out exactly what happened and what should be done,’’ Valandra said.
The larger outage occurred as a result of a short-circuiting in an underground power vault during the Aug. 21 planned outage. The outage was to allow installation of a new high-voltage power line in the west campus, according to a GA fact sheet on the incident.
But the surge and larger outage affected computer servers operated by the Department of Information Services in Office Building 2, on the east campus, and it forced those to run on backup diesel power until the evening of Aug. 23.
Valandra said pay warrants and unemployment checks were processed on time.
GA’s fact sheet says:
Repair cost estimates include costs for the electrical engineering consultants, replacement equipment and diesel fuel. GA plans to seek emergency funds to cover it.
