Kernel Panic when shutting down with failed front-end models

I was trying to shut down l1seib1 which was unable to connect to its I/O chassis. I issued the 'poweroff' command on a remote SSH console (as I was unable to use the KVM console due to execessive messages). However, it did not power down. A check of the KVM screen showed remnants of a kernel panic. I used the remote Dolphin port disable from the old boot server and was able to power off the machine manually.

We need to test various failure modes and determine why this occurs ( and fix it)