Why Did Grizzly Stadium Lose Power During Saturday's Game?

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - After completing my extra duties as Public Address Announcer on Saturday afternoon at Washington Grizzly Stadium following a massive power outage that took down the iconic ‘Griz Vision’ screen, as well as most other electrical systems, I spoke with Dave Kuntz, Director of Strategic Communications about just what happened.

He said it was ‘a switch issue’.

Stadium Power Outage Caused by a 'Switch Issue' in the Heating Plant

“The Switch issue took place in our Steam Heat Plant, which is that steam smoke stack there adjacent to the stadium,” began Kuntz. “Once we were able to identify the issue, we created a back feed kind of electricity loop to start feeding the stadium again. It took a couple of hours to do that, so we're grateful for everybody's patience, for yourself, and for the referee crew to help finish that game on Saturday.”

Kuntz provided more information about the outage.

Kuntz said There is an 'After Action Plan' to Deal with Future Issues

“Ultimately, this was an old switch and bad timing, but since Saturday, we've launched an after-action plan to start looking at what we can do to be better prepared going forward if this were to happen again,” he said. “We already have on-campus conversations going about generator activities and other ways that we can bring back electricity if we were to have a large-scale outage event again.”

Kuntz said the administration has been working to bring the heating plant-forward with the latest technology to see that such an event won’t happen again, especially in such a visible environment.

The Game Was Completed Thanks to the Referee and his Official Timer

“We’re getting help with the issues that we've had on the heating plant due to its age, and bring it another era of a lifespan,” he said. “So really, we have made the infrastructure upgrades in recent years to get some of this aging infrastructure officially aged out, as we're bringing on newer and more efficient technologies to campus here in the years ahead.”

My PA (Public Address) microphone and the referee’s microphone were the only things working for most of the last quarter of the game. The referee kept track of the remaining time in the game, and the Grizzlies prevailed 28-17.