Meredith Rodriguez
News Assistant
In the midst of a Malibu-wide blackout, to where would a Seaver student turn? Why, to Malibu Yo, of course — where else?
Half-a-dozen Pepperdine students ate ice cream in the dark after a blackout hit Malibu from John Tyler to Webb Way, at 8:24 p.m. yesterday.
The shortage was caused by weather damage to one of the SoCal Edison lines, affecting more than 1,100 customers throughout Malibu, including Pepperdine’s Malibu campus.
Darkness did not inhibit a good time however.
“This is an adventure, we’re having fun,” Seaver junior and Malibu Yo employee, Caroline Thomas said, while scooping ice cream for a customer.
Junior Cosima Luther, whose symphony orchestra dress rehearsal was interrupted by the blackout, agreed.
“I love it,” Luther said. “We’ve been here a half an hour and we’ll probably be here a lot longer.”
Not all students share Luther and Thomas’ sentiments, however.
“I’m sick of it,” junior Akil Thompson said. “Blackouts happened in the summer, in the fall and now in the spring.”
Thompson expressed particular concern over the food in his refrigerator.
A circuit line on-campus contributed to the outage according to Public Safety Sergeant, Alex Ghazalpour.
Sheriff deputies stationed at the intersection of Webb and PCH, assumed the black-out was induced by a Pepperdine generator.
Two police units were stationed at Webb and Malibu Canyon in order to monitor the darkened intersections, according to Deputy Officer Bernard. No traffic accidents had been reported as of 10 p.m.
Only one problem had been reported. A heating unit caught fire at Taverna Toni’s, the Greek restaurant at Cross-Creek, causing minor damage.
“Two power surges tripped a heating unit and caused the heating unit to burn itself out,” Deputy Monaco said.
Calabasas and Malibu fire departments responded as a precaution.
Power returned at 10:52 p.m. at Pepperdine and at around 9:45 in other places, such as Malibu Yo. This time the outage only lasted about two hours. One and a half weeks ago, a blackout caused by the same Edison line caused a six-hour blackout, according to Monaco.
03-24-2005