Nearly 80 percent of Notre Dame's campus was left without power at about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, according to Notre Dame Security Police duty officer Dave Austin.
The outage was most likely caused by a power loss at a South Bend lift station. Austin said it was not immediately clear which areas of campus lost power, but affected areas included South Quad and the security building area. Full power returned after about 15 minutes, although some areas were still without power over an hour later.
Most buildings converted to limited backup power immediately, and NDSP reported no injuries or electronic systems failures resulting from the power loss.
At Saint Mary's, about 300 phones were without service after lightning struck outside the security building.
Telecommunications coordinator Sandy Handley said she knew of no lasting harm, but that the lightning did cause temporary damage to some wiring.
Most of the affected phones were staff and convent lines.
The phones lost service around 5 p.m.
An emergency repair order was placed to the off-campus provider and as of 10 p.m., service had been restored to the majority of campus, said Handley.
"What we think happened is that after the strike hit near the security building, it traveled underground and affected some of the cables," director of marketing and communications Nick Farmer said. "A technician came out and determined that there was no real damage, but it did in fact interrupt the system."
As of 10 p.m. Wednesday night, the telecommunications department was waiting on confirmation from the off-campus service provider that everything was running correctly.
