It was purely by coincidence that Austin Public Schools Superintendent James Hess was at Banfield Elementary School at 7 a.

Wednesday, May 31, 2000

It was purely by coincidence that Austin Public Schools Superintendent James Hess was at Banfield Elementary School at 7 a.m. this morning. When he and his daughter Jackie arrived to pick up a school book, they found a dark building and a crew from Austin Utilities.

When he was informed a few minutes later that a transformer had gone out and wouldn’t be fixed until later in the day, he made the decision to cancel school for the day.

"It was basically a safety issue," Hess said. "Being without power would mean no fire alarm, no emergency notification system, no kitchen, no lights and few telephones."

It was only about a half-hour earlier that Austin Utilities had become aware of the outage. Tom Tylutki, Austin Utilities director of electrical distribution, said the call came at about 6:30 a.m.

After checking the lines and transformer, it was determined that the transformer went bad, with lightning the probable cause.

Tylutki said Banfield was the only place affected by the lightning strike; other homes and businesses may have noticed a flickering of the lights, Tylutki said, but that’s all.

Tylutki expected the utility crew to have the new transformer installed by this afternoon.

All other area schools were in session today, and Hess said Banfield students should expect to be back in the classroom tomorrow.