NIU’s Naperville campus was shut down and all classes were canceled Thursday after its heating system failed.

Frigid temperatures caused the system to fail around 10 or 10:30 a.m., NIU Naperville Director Regina Girdauskas said.

The 11 Thursday classes, all scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. or later, were nixed after the building lost heat.

“It’s just too chilly in there to hold classes,” said Melanie Magara, NIU’s assistant vice president for public affairs. “The heat had dropped to uninhabitable levels.”

As of Thursday afternoon, staff from NIU and equipment manufacturers were at the scene to make repairs. NIU Naperville does not hold classes on Fridays, so there will be an extra day for repairs.

“I just talked to people working on the system, and they are trying their best to have the system operating as soon as possible,” Girdauskas said. “It was very unexpected and coming at a very horrible time, when temperatures reach zero and below at night. Obviously, it makes an impact.”

Although the incident itself was unexpected, NIU is prepared for these emergency situations.

“Our total maintenance budget, it’s at least $2 million,” said Bob Albanese, NIU’s associate vice president of finance and facilities. “We’ve already got money in that budget to handle things like this; that’s something we almost expect to happen, to have some emergency breakdowns.”

NIU officials especially expect mechanical breakdowns during periods of near-zero temperatures, he said.

“So far this year – knock on wood – we’ve been fairly lucky not to have a lot of these emergency repairs,” Albanese said. “We’ve got the staff available to reprioritize what they’re doing and make them available to work on it.”

It was not immediately known how the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system malfunctioned, but there’s an obvious culprit.

“This cold snap definitely – definitely – is a prime factor,” Girdauskas said.

Officials were unable to predict when the system would be fixed, but workers have some extra time as NIU Naperville classes do not resume until Saturday. There are five undergraduate classes and at least one graduate class that all begin at 9 a.m. or later each Saturday, according to www.niu.edu.

“Most of the classes at other campuses tend to be for working adults,” Magara said, “So, they tend to be in the afternoon and evening [or on Saturday].”