Vautin said the University was spared from severe problems because power was not lost on the north part of campus that houses the bulk of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ science labs.

Likewise, the city of Cambridge experienced no severe problems from the loss of electricity. Emergency management officials knew of only one injury related to the outage—a head laceration to a postal employee who fell in a darkened stairwell.

The loss of power was caused by a malfunction of two electricity transformers on Putnam Avenue, near its intersection with River Street and behind the Bread and Circus supermarket.

Jonathan Carey, an NSTAR spokesperson, said crews quickly arrived at the transformer substation after the malfunction, but because of safety precautions and the complexity of the problem it took nearly two hours to get power back on.

While Carey said power crews were still unsure of what caused the transformers to malfunction, he said that heat likely was a factor in the outage.

“Obviously, the heat is putting strain on all of our equipment,” he said.

The company yesterday afternoon went to its highest state of emergency alert and is bringing additional crews into the area to deal with any potential problems.