Many students, faculty and staff were left in the dark for about an hour Thursday morning because of power outages.

Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Ron Nayler said about 17 buildings, including 1835 Hinman, Harris Hall, and the Materials and Life Sciences Building, were affected by the outage.

Thursday night, outages also were reported at University Library, Fisk Hall and parts of Norris University Center.

Nayler said the outage was caused by Commonwealth Edison and was not a result of problems with campus equipment.

Nayler said there have been three power outages in the past six weeks and all three have been ComEd related. ComEd could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Nayler said Com Ed’s feeder system to Evanston and NU is fragile and “really needs substantial improvement.” Geology Professor Emile Okal was in his office in Locy Hall during the outage. He said the level of the power supply is a “disgrace,” and that when he tells colleagues at other universities that he has to wait two hours for the power to come back on they start laughing.

“I find it unbelievable that a major research university would have a power supply that is so unreliable,” Okal said.

In response to the power outages, Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton has appointed a committee to explore the problem. The committee, a combination of city staff and community members with some technical expertise, will report their findings to the Evanston City Council.

The situation, however, could be worse. Nayler said there are areas in the region and the state which have more problems with Com Ed than does Evanston.

“We have nowhere near the amount of outages on the Chicago Campus,” he said.

Political science graduate student Zachary Cook was teaching a class in Harris Hall during the blackout. The blackout was well-timed for Cook since he “didn’t need any newfangled technology,” such as transparencies or a tape recorder.

Cook, a Daily columnist, said he had only a minor inconvenience: The video screen was stuck in front of the blackboard, allowing him only a quarter of the board to write on. He said the students were more inconvenienced trying to take notes in the dark.

Weinberg sophomore Lisa Sacks was at her dorm, 1835 Hinman, when the power outage hit, but said she was not inconvenienced.

“It did not affect me very much,” she said. “I was just heading out for class anyway.”

Nayler said he hasn’t heard of the power outage causing any damage, such as lost research or disrupted experiments.

“It’s too early to really know what any of those consequences (of the outage) were,” he said.