Chaos! Hallam students evacuated from library and ‘wandering around in pitch black’ after huge power cut

Sheffield Hallam University was plunged into darkness this week after huge city grid blackout sparked chaos on campus.

For around two hours there was a total darkness in the uni's main city campus buildings: Owen, Norfolk, Harmer, Howard, Sheaf, Cantor, Science Park, Eric Mensforth, Adsetts and the HUBs.

It left some students with cancelled sessions and others attending their lectures under emergency lighting, with no electricity to power computers.

The outage, which took place on Thursday, is understood to have affected 10 university buildings and lasted for two hours.

Two second year students who were studying in the library in Adsetts building, reported that the lights and computers "suddenly turned off" and they were evacuated.

Thomas, a member of library staff, said: "We had to be evacuated because the electrics off and so the fire alarms won’t go off in the case of a fire."

One second year English literature student described how going to her lecture within Eric Mensforth building was "kind of spooky" as it was "pitch black in some parts due to the lack of windows".

Eric Mensforth building under emergency lighting.

She went on to say "everyone's just a bit annoyed about things being cancelled and when I arrived at uni, everyone looked very confused wandering about in the dark".

Another student described how "none of the water was working in the toilets or the sinks", meaning that for around two hours students had no access to functioning toilet facilities.

Sheffield Hallam took to twitter to announce the power returning around 2pm but was met with exam-weary students fearing for their deadlines.

Unfortunately for some students, unsaved work was deleted when the computers suddenly shut down. Some raged on Twitter about deadlines being affected – a healthy way to procrastinate.

Despite the library having to close, some other parts of the university managed to cope the old-fashioned way.

A holocaust event that took place in the student’s union on Thursday afternoon was lit by candlelight.

A Sheffield Hallam Uni spokesman confirmed a national grid outage meant "a number of university buildings lost power".