Heat was the hot topic on Bakersfield College’s main campus on a recent scorching Wednesday.

“It was burning up in my (humanities) Chicano history class,” said Kristin Schutte, a 19-year-old political science major.

All of her Wednesday classes are held in the Humanities Building, but only her English B1A class got out early.

“We were in H-52, and she let us out like an hour early ’cause it was just way too hot in there,” said Schutte.

A lightning storm may have been the cause of a major meltdown in the air conditioning system’s main chiller, which provides cool air to the bulk of the campus, according to Bob Day, director of auxiliary services. Although lightning did not hit the campus directly, “it could’ve just been the electrical charge in the atmosphere,” said Day.

The system failure, along with the 100-degree heat outside, sent temperatures soaring in virtually every building on campus on Sept. 3, even causing the library and computer commons to shut down at 6:15 p.m., an hour and a half early.

Candice Carmona, executive secretary of learning resources and information technology, said that a thermometer in a library office upstairs read 90 degrees that afternoon. Carmona’s office is downstairs by Media Services.

“It was about 84 degrees in our office over here,” Carmona said. She spoke directly with President Dr. Sandra Serrano, who ordered the library to be closed.

Although Day said about 80 percent of the system was running by around noon, the college could not seem to get the air working in the library until later that night.

That afternoon, Day found out that a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in the area was affected by the same storm, causing PG&E to have to reroute power through the campus.

This rerouting of power turned out to be what caused the problem for the library, said Day. He said that the new system is so sensitive that it detected the imbalance, “but instead of correcting for it like the old air chillers did, it just shut it down.”

PG&E’s corporate office said it did not know anything about the problem.

“We could get it up to run, but it wouldn’t run for more than a few minutes, and then it would shut down again,” said Day. “Knock on wood right now, but we’re good to go.”