A spate of headbolt outlet failures in the past couple of weeks has inconvenienced an unknown number of parkers at UAF, as temperatures hovered around 40 degrees below zero. Kathy Mosca, the Office Manager at KUAC, was one of those affected: She had to take her car to the shop after a row of plugs in the Nenana lot failed two weeks ago.

"I was out a car all week, plus the $50 to replace the battery," Mosca said. She wonders if there couldn't be some kind of system to signal outages.

Another UAF employee who asked to remain nameless said that she had seen the plug-ins fail twice in the past two weeks and had to leave her car overnight last week because it wouldn't start.

Plug-in heaters act, essentially, as a short circuit, said Ed Foster, the superintendent of operations at Facilities Services. "They draw a tremendous amount of electricity," he said. Foster said that the fuses used for the plug-ins are the size of "a stick of dynamite," but that they can still be overloaded, and that is the main cause of failure for users, he said.

Foster said that to put a monitor on each of the many circuits required for UAF's plug-ins would be prohibitively expensive. "If we had a monitor light out there for every one, campus would look like the Las Vegas strip," Foster said.

The first thing people should do if their plug in has no power is flip the breaker switch that, in many cases, is on the box along with the plugs. Parking Services has been putting up posters around campus that show how to flip the breaker.

If anyone encounters a plug-in that not working they should call Facilities at 474-7000, Foster said. He stressed that it is important to note the number or letter on the specific plug so that it is easy for the electricians to find.

The operation and maintenance of the plug-ins costs anywhere from $60,000 to $150,000 per year, which is paid for by parking fees, Foster said.

Mosca thinks that those fees ought to buy a bit more security. Mike Earnest, an associate director of admissions at UAF who also left work to find a cold engine, agrees. "I'm not saying heads should roll over this or anything," he said. "But you should be able to expect that if you plug your car in in the morning, the power isn't going to shut off during the day."