Gilbert’s Southeast Regional Library was closed for the second Sunday in two weeks, and reopened today without telephone and Internet service due to a transformer explosion in downtown Phoenix.
All 15 locations in the Maricopa County Library District system, including a branch at Perry High School in Gilbert, are affected by the outage. They can check items out but can’t check anything in, because they can’t be re-entered into the system, Southeast Library branch manager Andrew Chanse said. The libraries’ Web site is also down.
The Southeast Regional Library at Greenfield and Guadalupe roads will remain open until its normal closing time of 9 p.m. The computer and phone outage was expected to continue through Tuesday. Officials hope to have the system’s main phone number (602-652-3000) working by Tuesday, but operators won’t be able to to do anything besides give verbal information until the computers are working.
The small explosion occurred Saturday afternoon while a transformer at downtown Phoenix’s 2700 building, where the library district is headquartered, was being worked on. One electrician was injured and taken to the hospital, district spokeswoman Audrey Brownell said.
The Southeast Regional Library, the system’s largest and busiest, was closed July 13 and 14 after a malfunctioning sprinkler soaked the periodicals section.
