Power outage blamed for smoke in several buildings at Saint Vincent College, prompting evacuations

An electrical power outage caused several motors in Saint Vincent College buildings to start smoking, prompting an evacuation of multiple buildings Wednesday evening, fire officials said.

According to Chief Brian Schultheis of the Lloydsville Volunteer Fire Department, no one was injured.

Some groups of students are on the grounds for summer housing, classes and summer programs.

Alfred Hall, Placid Hall, the headmaster’s building, the post office and part of the monastery were evacuated, Schultheis said.

The electrical motors were all located inside the buildings, he said. The fire crews were not sure what caused the power outage, but there was no fire. The incident was reported about 6:50 p.m.

Firefighters from Unity, Derry Township and Latrobe responded, along with state police and a Mutual Aid EMS crew.

About 8:30 p.m., firefighters were waiting on West Penn Power to turn the power back on, the chief said.

Areas set to be used by the Pittsburgh Steelers for training camp were not damaged, and their use of the property shouldn’t be impacted, Schultheis said.

The cafeteria was checked, but there was no impact to the building, he said, and the dorms are fine.

A haze of smoke was found in the headmaster’s building and in the monastery, he said.

Taylor Hall, a dining supervisor at Saint Vincent, said the power went out inside the cafeteria building.

“Essentially, the power went out, and the lights started blinking in all of our offices and stuff like that in the (cafeteria.) The lights were just about 15 minutes straight of blinking,” he said. “By that time, one of our staff members got a phone call from a family member that got alerted that there was some kind of a fire and the fire companies were coming.”

He walked outside and saw firefighters heading into the building with prods to check the walls.

“After that, they came up to me when I was walking through the hallway and said to get our staff out,” he said.

Brother Angelo Lichtenstein and Brother Xavier O’Mara, monks who live at Saint Vincent, said they were not sure what had happened at first. They had just finished dinner and were walking around outside when the fire trucks came. They did not see any damage inside.

“The lights flickered, and the power shut down,” O’Mara said. “We were wondering what was going on.”

An alert was sent out to some people on campus through ECampus, he said.