A severe storm roared through D.C. on Saturday evening, causing heavy damage to the Mount Vernon Campus and leaving residents on the satellite campus without power with debris strewn about.
Wind gusts reached a high of 84 mph on the Vern — the storm’s fastest recorded gusts — knocking down trees and destroying items on the campus, like trash cans. Damage on the Foggy Bottom Campus appeared to be less severe, with small debris on sidewalks and roads and some knocked-over benches and umbrellas.
Jack Gipson, a rising sophomore living in West Hall, said the Vern lost power at about 5:30 p.m., during the peak of the storm. He said the campus has emergency lighting in hallways, and the tap access for residences is battery-powered and still functional.
“It’s just kind of a waiting game,” Gipson said.
Courtesy of Jack Gipson
Gipson said fire alarms began going off on the Mount Vernon Campus after the outage. The storm broke off the tops of swinging benches.
He said trees on the Vern’s quad partly or completely fell. Gipson said one tree blocked one of the roads near Eckles Library, but the Mount Vernon Express and Lyft rides were still functional.
The University sent an alert at 7:16 p.m. announcing the GW Emergency Services line was down. The emergency services line was restored at 8:41 p.m., but the rest of the Vern was still without power as of 11 p.m.
About 15,000 people in the District lost power Saturday afternoon, according to the Washington Post.
