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Downers Grove North High School 4436 Main Street Downers Grove, IL 60515 Wednesday, November
Monday, April 20 , 201513, 2013 Volume 45 Issue 7 DGNs Student Newspaper

News (2) In-Depth (4-5) A&E (6) Sports (8)

Learn about the chance Explore the invisible Read about Lemon Tree View the bittersweet
to have a student DJ at issue of teen homeless- Grocers experience on a realities of ending your
future proms. ness in the community. hit Food Network show. high school sports career.

LIGHTS OUT, POWER OUT

Lightning strike
causes school-wide
power outage, electri-
cal damages at DGS
Abbe Murphy | Feature Editor
amur1548@csd99.org

After a lightning strike caused downed power lines

on 63rd St., DGS lost partial power starting at the end
of third period and lasting for the rest of the day on
April 9.
The strike blew a fuse in a transformer that pro-
vides power to a portion of the school, causing damage
to electrical appliances. Students remained at school
for the duration of the school day, and ComEd shut the
power off completely at 4 p.m. for maintenance.
My classroom was on the second floor with a clear
view of the [lightning] strike and we all saw it hit the
ground just outside the school, sophomore Kimberly
Nothdurft said. When we saw it, everyone stopped for
a second and then people were like, Did you just see
that?! and we all talked about how we wanted this to
happen so we could get out of class.
In addition to a portion of the school losing power,
electrical complications caused fire alarms to go off
twice.
I was in gym at the time in our basement weight
room and some of the lights flickered suddenly and
then went out, senior Ryan Heneghan said. Three DGS power outage at a glance
minutes later, the fire alarm goes off. We had to go out-
side but we were only out there for like ten minutes April 9: DGS lost partial power
because it started to rain. When we went back inside, starting at the end of third period,
all of the lights were still off, not all of them but a lot of lasted until the end of the day;
random ones.
After an initial alarm, a second alarm sounded. Stu- electrical complications cause fire
dents were informed by staff that the alarms were go- alarms to go off.
PHOTO BY RYAN HENEGHAN

ing off unintentionally and everyone should remain in

the building.
According to District 99 superintendent Mark Mc-
Donald, the technological difficulties that resulted
from the lightning strike did not compromise student
safety at anytime.
Any time I have been involved in a power outage at
a school building, the response has been to wait until
the power goes back on. I believe students are safest
at school and thus I have never seen it as a viable op-
tion to dismiss school. This particular incident was the
I think the South administration
and teachers handled the situa-
tion quite well.
-Mark McDonald
longest I can recall in which power was off, but because
part of the building had power, students and staff ad-
justed and school went on, McDonald said.
Because there was always power in some parts of
the building, students were told what bathrooms still
April 10: Certain elevators, hall-
ways were not functioning.
BLACKOUT: DGS student Ryan Heneghan captures the chaos in the hallway with his cell phone during the blackout on Thursday, April 9.
functioned. Teachers were able to move students out
of classrooms without power to try and continue class
Sound Off
as normally as possible. Students react to the power outage
I was in photography when it happened and about
half of the computers lost power, including mine. It Our class had to walk outside in a thunder-
storm where we were endangered by getting
made it more difficult to meet the deadline because I
lost an entire period worth of work time, senior Nolan struck by lightning.
Sturlis said. -Tiffany Nguyen (12)
By the next day, certain hallways and elevators at
DGS were still not functioning due to the loss of power.
Some DGN freshmen were at the school on
As of April 14, all power is back on and electrical prob- a field trip to watch Schindlers List when it
lems have been resolved. happened
I anticipate both schools will from time to time have
power outages, McDonald said. I think the South ad- [The teachers] finally got the movie to start
ministration and teachers handled the situation quite after a little bit and it was kind of annoying
well. I anticipate a similar response from either school because it would turn on and off randomly.
if we should have a power outage in the future. - Ryan Galik (9)