A number of river Houses and other Harvard buildings suffered power outages yesterday afternoon, beginning around 4:45 p.m. and continuing for almost four hours.

The outages--which may have been caused by a power surge--were the most widespread in recent memory.

"This has never happened on this scale to my knowledge," said University spokesperson Joe Wrinn.

Wrinn said the DeWolfe housing complex, Eliot, Leverett, Mather and Quincy Houses all experienced some loss of power, as did the Kennedy School of Government, the Taubman Center and Rosovsky Hall.

Students also reported electrical problems at Kirkland and Winthrop Houses.

Wrinn said University crews first determined that the electric lines connecting the buildings were not damaged and, subsequently, went "building to building," flipping circuit breakers and restoring power.

"All power was on by 8:30," he said.

Wrinn said the outage most likely originated at the Holyoke Center, where a surge of electricity in one of the power grids might have sent each of the affected buildings more volts than their circuits could handle. The cause of the surge, he said, is unknown.