Critical Utilities Failure

General Information

Several types of utilities and various factors can come into play when planning for and addressing a major utility failure on campus. The College has plans in place to minimize disruption and business interruption from these types of emergencies. The types of utilities this plan covers are:

  • Power Failure/Electrical Outage
  • Gas Leak
  • Water Outage/Boil Order
  • Flooding, Plumbing, or Sewer Failure
  • Communications Failure
  • Telephone/Cell Phone
  • Computer (Internet/Network/E-mail)
  • Elevator Failure

Factors to Consider

When the outage occurs

  • Day vs. night
  • Weekday vs. weekend
  • School in session vs. break period
  • College open vs. College closed (e.g. during an emergency)

What area of campus is affected

  • Occupied residential building vs. academic/support building
  • Critical function area
  • Food service
  • Health service

What specifically is being disrupted

  • Life safety systems
  • Fire alarm systems
  • Sprinkler/fire suppression systems
  • Emergency lighting
  • Evacuation signage
  • Research/experiment equipment
  • Elevator(s)
  • Critical Communications
  • Emergency notification system
  • Telephone system
  • Bluelight/emergency phones
  • Security switchboard
  • Office phones
  • Radio systems
  • Security
  • Facilities Management
  • Security systems
  • IntelliKey
  • RCard readers
  • Security alarm systems
  • Security camera systems

Other Factors

  • Simultaneous emergency situation occurring
  • Availability of outside assistance

Procedures

A. Power Failure/Electrical Outage
Power failures or outages periodically impact the College for a variety of reasons. These disruptions can be localized to a building, involve a group of buildings, or be campus wide in nature. The Facilities Management department has procedures in place to deal with whatever type of outage is affecting the College.

  1. Large scale electrical outages will require Winter Park Electric notification. Winter Park Electric is responsible to restore power to our high voltage feeds.
  2. If the outage is located on the owner side of the feeds Facilities will coordinate repair and provide updates as required.
  3. Structures equipped with generators will have an automatic response to the outage and will provide emergency power to selected building systems. It should be noted that many systems such as HVAC, elevators, most lighting circuits will not operate. Those systems with battery backup such as fire panels, electronic entry controls, emergency egress lights and computers will operate only as long as their batteries last.

B. Gas Leak

  1. Contact TECO for emergency repair.
  2. Campus Safety to evacuate building if gas is detected inside structure.
  3. Campus Safety to control access to structure to prevent reentry to everyone except repair personnel.
  4. If the leak is located outside, Campus Safety should insure that the leak area is evacuated and entry to the leak area controlled.

C. Water Outage/Boil Order

  1. Contact Winter Park utilities for repair and status of repairs if the leak is located on a Winter Park line.
  2. If the leak is located on the owner side of the lines Facilities will coordinate repair and provide updates as required.

D. Flooding, Plumbing, or Sewer Failure

  1. 1. Contact Winter Park utilities for repair and status of repairs if the leak is located on a Winter Park line.
  2. If the leak is located on the owner side of the lines Facilities will coordinate repair and provide updates as required.

E. Communications Failure
Telephone/Cell Phone

  1. Emergency Situation with phone systems working:
    • a. Setup safe location for students, faculty, staff, and install emergency lines to that area.
    • b. Telecom staff deploys to Main Switch in Crummer to manage the telephone system.
  2. In the event the phone system went down, Campus Safety is deployed with Facilities radios to be given to all persons listed in section 5.6 of this plan.

Computer (Internet/Network/E-mail)

  • See Information Technology Emergency Plan in section 5 of the Emergency Operations Plan.

Elevator Failure

  1. For entrapment situations Winter Park Fire should be notified.
  2. For nonentrapment situations Facilities should be notified.
  3. Repair of elevators is contracted to a vendor through facilities. Status of elevators should be obtained from Facilities.