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A power outage across Harvard campus early Thursday morning left at least eight residential Houses without hot water for several hours.

The electrical outage was caused by a circuit failure on Allston’s Blackstone Street — which is home to Blackstone Steam Plant, the facility that distributes power to many of Harvard’s campus buildings, according to College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo.

“Some buildings within Harvard Yard and the River area, as well as the Blackstone Steam Plant, were without power for about 25 minutes,” Palumbo wrote in an email. “There was some impact at Harvard Business School and Athletics area, but only for a few moments.”

The Blackstone Plant resumed steam output by 5:30 a.m. Thursday, and reached full production shortly after 8:30 a.m., according to Palumbo. The hot water in the undergraduate dorms returned to Houses throughout the day and into the evening.

Management staff in Dunster, Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, Mather, Quincy, and Winthrop House sent emails to residents in the morning alerting students of the power issue. Freshmen were notified of the restored power and steam at 12:36 p.m. By mid-afternoon, several Houses also informed residents that the hot water had been restored.

But not all Houses were so fortunate — students in Winthrop House’s Standish Hall were left out in the cold without hot water until 6 p.m.

Students living in Standish were advised “to use the showers at MAC Gym or in the Gore Hallway bathrooms” in an email from Winthrop Building Manager Sarah Gallant.

Paurakh Rijal ’25 said that he woke up from the power outage when his lights flickered off, since he normally keeps them on due to a fear of the dark.

“I get really scared when it’s dark in my room,” he said, adding that he quickly realized there was a power outage. “I just kind of had to take a second, take a deep breath, and then I went back to sleep.”

Later, Rijal — who lives in Standish Hall and is a former Crimson Business associate — took a shower, but he said he was unaffected by the colder temperatures as he normally opts for a cold shower.

“It actually worked out — but I will say, the water was a bit colder today because of the power outage,” he said.

Mir Zayid Alam ’25 said he had woken up early to finish up an assignment for PS70: “Introduction to Digital Fabrication.” But when the power went out, so did his WiFi, leaving him unable to upload files.

“So I woke up at crack of dawn — 6 a.m. or whatever it was — working on this website and then all of a sudden the WiFi goes out,” he said.

Alam said the power outage put him “out of commission,” while he waited for the WiFi to return.

“I was sitting in my bed, barely awake, like, ‘I need to finish this before my 10:30 section — which I also haven’t done my reading for — and now I can’t access the readings. I can’t do my website. I can’t do anything,” he said.

Luckily, the WiFi came back online and Alam “was able to bang it out” and take a nap before class.

—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @h_chavre.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.