Rat sparked power outage that delayed finals, admin says

By Jake Tiger

While stressed-out Rider students were cramming for their finals in the early hours of Dec. 11, campus suddenly went dark, with certain buildings experiencing sporadic or complete outages just before exams were supposed to begin.

The culprit? An overly curious rat, according to a university administrator.

Vice President of University Operations Mike Reca said the outage resulted from damage to the power substation behind Daly Dining Hall, as the rat likely weaseled through a gap in the metal panels and stuck its nose where it probably should not have.

“When the conduit of electricity – the rat – made contact with the wires and the metal in the cabinet, it sent an arc of high voltage through the giant breaker that shorted out the cabinet,” Reca said. “That sent a plume of smoke that blew the door open to the cabinet.”

The cabinet is large enough for a human to walk into and is slightly larger than the bus stop at the front of campus on Route 206, Reca said.

This was the ‘fourth or fifth’ time an incident like this has happened during his 34 years at Rider, with the last time being about a decade ago, according to Reca. He said he had been calling this particular rat ‘Ratatouille.’

“It got up into the switchgear and into the breaker panel, and yes, ‘Ratatouille’ got fried,” Reca said. “[My initial reaction was] actually a little bit of relief, because that meant a component didn’t fail. … The relief was not for the rat, though. I am grieving for the rat.”

Reca said the rat did not survive, but there was evidence of it at the substation.

Public Safety Capt. Matthew Babcock did not have photos of the damaged substation, and the security cameras around Daly Dining Hall cut out when the outage occurred.

Reca said workers at Daly Dining Hall reported the outage to Public Safety around 6 a.m., and workers were assessing the damage around 6:30 a.m. To facilitate the repairs, power to the entire campus was shut down – barring a few essential buildings – and most Rider employees worked remotely.

Reca commended everyone who helped repair the damage on short notice: “The amount of work we had to complete in a 10-hour span was amazing, so kudos to all of them,” he said.

Reca was unable to say how much the damage cost the university, as Rider had not yet received the bill for the repairs.

While power was restored around 5:30 p.m. that day, the university postponed any final exams on Dec. 11 to the following day, according to universitywide messages sent out throughout the day.

Rider initially informed the community of the outage at 7:22 a.m. Dec. 11 using its Rave Alert system and sent out seven more alerts as repairs were made and reschedulings were finalized.

During the planned power shutdown during Thanksgiving break, facilities workers checked each of the cabinets around campus for potential gaps like the one used by the rat, patching up breaches with caulk and fiberglass, Reca said.

“We do take precautions, but we can never stop it,” Reca said. “I don’t know how our dear friend got in. Who knows? Somebody could have left the door open when they were working on it. It could have been a multitude of 1,000 things.”