A power outage enveloped Galileo halls in darkness this morning as students began to arrive to their first classes. Beginning at 7:53, the blackout lasted well through first period, bringing up students’ hopes for a leisurely day without school work.
“I called my supervisor who then got in touch with the superintendent’s office and they created an emergency response team to help adapt to the situation,”says Principal Panjabi, “The initial report said that PG&E would not have this fixed until about 6pm. There were conversations around what to do for the whole school day, there were even conversations around maybe having to cancel school.”
Some classes were able to proceed with lessons as usual, but because the internet was down, projectors were inoperative, and attendance couldn’t be taken, some classes suspended teaching while the power was off. Students wanting breakfast at the cafeteria were worried about getting food, but a way was figured out for students to quickly pick up their meal and exit so they wouldn’t have to stay in the dark.
Despite the report indicating the outage to last through the whole school day, the lights suddenly turned back on at 9:06 during first period, making the outage duration only slightly over a full hour. The internet was still down for a little while following the power restoration, but classes were able to resume normally for the rest of the day.
According to Principal Panjabi, “It was something that was neighborhood wide. Someone sent me a map saying that the power went out all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. So it was not anything in our control, it was something to do with PG&E.”
