Blackout caused by equipment failure

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2002 | 10:53 a.m.

Conspiracy theorists who thought there was something fishy about the power outage that ended Saturday night's UNLV-Wisconsin football prematurely -- and wiped out bets on the game -- are probably a little disappointed today.

The blackout, which cancelled the final 7:41 of the Badgers' 27-7 nationally televised victory, was not caused by a disgruntled gambler or even a car crashing into a nearby transformer as had been reported by the police and media afterward.

Turns out it was just an equipment failure.

Nevada Power spokesman Edgar Patino said Monday that repairmen discovered equipment failures from splices within a cable and a burnt module at the stadium.

The power, which went out at about 9 p.m. on Saturday night, wasn't restored until 4:02 a.m. Sunday morning.

So it was a good thing the Badgers and Rebels didn't wait around more than twenty minutes for the lights to come back on. Coaches John Robinson of UNLV and Barry Alvarez of Wisconsin agreed to end the game where it stood, citing the safety of the players.

"There was nothing anyone could have done to prevent the failure," Patino said. "The equipment failure was not caused by humans or human intervention or sabotage. It was a bad splice within a cable at the riser. A plain, old equipment failure."

Thanks in part to a rarely used Las Vegas sports book rule which requires football games go at least 55 minutes to be official wagers --- Saturday's game went only 52:19 --- some radio sports talk shows as well as a local TV sports anchor speculated about the possibility of a conspiracy.

Most local sports books said the money they saved on paying off Wisconsin bets was insignificant.

Stadium director Daren Libonati scoffed at the notion that sabotage might be involved.

"That's just nonsense," he said. "I can promise you no bettor with a ticket who could get to the power riser would be able to do this. He'd be fried to the wall. We're talking about a huge, huge power flow."

Libonati said the source of the problem was at a power riser about a mile and a half southeast of Sam Boyd Stadium. The stadium receives its electricity from a different source than the Silver Bowl soccer fields across the street which suffered no outage.

"Thank God for that," Libonati said. "We get a different leg of power or that whole area would have been totally dark. And that could have been scary."

Emergency lighting did come on a few minutes after the outage which brought some light to the field but not enough to resume playing the game. Generators in the parking lot also lit up most areas outside the stadium.

The outage caused a loud pop from the stadium speakers which briefly caused Robinson and Alvarez to wonder if there had been a terrorist attack on the stadium.

"It flashed through peoples' minds," Robinson said. "When I looked up and saw what was going on I thought it was electrical. But then there was one loud pop and you just didn't know. There was an unease."

Libonati said he believes Sam Boyd Stadium should be back up and running in time for Saturday night's 7 p.m. game against Kansas.

"I think Nevada Power has it fixed," he said. "We're still in the process of getting the scoreboard going again. You can't control how the power is delivered to the stadium. This is the first time we've ever had any problem like this at a football game."

Libonati said he would also explore the possibility of having enough backup power on hand in case of another outage, at least for future nationally televised games.

"They have backup power trucks that you'll see at major sporting events, like boxing matches, just in case something like this happens," he said. "But they run anywhere from about $7,500 to $20,000. It's something we may discuss in the future."