Power outages in about 50 campus buildings at about noon Tuesday caused some students to get stuck in elevators.

The outage lasted from about 12:13 p.m. to 12:35 p.m., according to an email sent to students from Senior Vice President Jay Kasey, but the Internet was out longer.

Ohio State Police confirmed outages in multiple buildings, including MorrillDrackett and Jones towers, the Baker Systems Engineering building, Dresse Laboratories and the Journalism Building, but had no further information at about 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Kasey said in the email the cause of the outage is still being investigated, but it appears to have been a failed transformer in the OSU substation.

“Power has been restored,” said Jim Lynch, university spokesman, in an email. “Thankfully, generators kicked on at some of the larger buildings to allow those facilities to operated without any interruptions.”

Intermittent outages have been restored since power was originally restored, Kasey said in the email.

A representative from Facilities, Operations and Development said the blown transformer affected North and West campus.

Lynch said there is an cost estimate for the damage because repairs to the transformer are under way. 

“We do not know the exact cause for why the transformer went off line,” Lynch said in an email, “but past evidence would suggest that a bird caused the issue.”

Justine Boggs, Patrick Maks, Alex Antonetz and Chelsea Castle contributed to this story.