A new Facilities Web site got its first emergency workout during a brief power outage to parts of campus on June 14. Just before 11 a.m. and as the temperature was on its way to a high of 102 degrees for the day, service was disrupted to 12 major buildings and dozens more in the core campus.

Facilities posted three messages and a complete list of the affected buildings at http://facilities.ucdavis.edu. Members of the campus community in unaffected buildings and those with portable devices enabling Web access could view the information.

Robert Whitaker, who manages information systems for Facilities, had initiated the idea for the posting of emergency messages and did the programming to facilitate the postings.

Chris Cioni, associate director of utilities, said a circuit interrupter — designed to protect the main circuits at the point where they connect to the smaller loop circuits — failed for one of the six main power feeds to campus.

Generators kicked in for buildings that have them, and power was rerouted to the affected buildings by 12:40 p.m. The failed device was replaced by noon June 15, and the buildings were switched back to the regular service feeder less than an hour later.