This aerial photograph shows the level of flooding that greeted Friday morning visitors to East Campus. Click on the image for a larger view.
by Joe King
As NIU students settled into their desks Monday morning, few could appreciate the extraordinary efforts over the weekend that allowed the academic year to start on time.
Between Thursday afternoon, when torrential downpours interrupted the university’s annual Opening Day – nearly 5 inches of rain fell in 24 hours on already saturated ground – and Monday morning, when fall semester classes began, more than 150 employees from the Physical Plant, Building and Grounds, the Heating Plant, Building Services and other departments labored in shifts around the clock.
They first worked to protect the campus from flood waters and then began to clean up the mess left behind when those waters receded.
“The entire campus community owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to those employees who toiled tirelessly to protect the campus from floodwaters,” NIU President John Peters said. “They rose up to an extraordinary challenge and did an outstanding job to get the academic year under way on schedule.”
Deputy Provost Frederick Schwantes, who was anticipating a massive game of musical chairs to accommodate classes Monday morning, was even more effusive in his praise.
“I doff my hat in absolute amazement, gratitude and awe to our colleagues in the Physical Plant for the superb job that they put together over the last few days in preparing, protecting and readying our classrooms for the start of fall classes,” Schwantes said Monday.
When the first bell of the semester rang, only three classrooms, all on the lower level of the Visual Arts Building, remained closed for ongoing cleanup efforts.
That building, located in a low area along the banks of the Kishwaukee River, was one of the hardest hit by the floods. Also experiencing substantial flooding were Still Hall, Still Gym and the NIU Broadcast Center, which houses WNIU/WNIJ.
Several other buildings experienced minor flooding in basements and below-grade areas, including Altgeld Hall, Barsema Hall, Cole Hall, the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, Faraday East and Faraday West, Kishwaukee Hall, the Music Building, the Psychology-Computer Science Building, the Stevens Building and Swen Parson Hall. Basements in the Lincoln and Douglas residence halls also experienced minor flooding, as did the breezeways in the Neptune Hall complex.
Bob Albanese, associate vice president for Finance and Facilities, said damage to campus buildings was limited almost entirely to some carpet and floor tiles that will have to be replaced.
That the damage was not far worse is amazing to anyone who toured the east side of campus on Friday. By sunrise that day, the East Lagoon was indistinguishable from the Kishwaukee River, which was flowing just below record high levels. Water from the lagoon swamped Castle Drive.
Flooding was also severe on the far west side of campus where parking Lot C-3 (at the Convocation Center) was swamped and a number of cars were damaged.
Nearby, Housing and Dining took the precautionary measure of evacuating about 75 occupants from the nearby Northern View housing complex, which opened just two days earlier. Residents there were asked to leave Friday morning and were allowed to return home Saturday.
The buildings themselves were safe, said Executive Director of Housing and Dining Kelly Wesener. They were surrounded by floodwaters, however, and officials did not want residents trapped there and cut off from emergency vehicles.
One factor in the decision to evacuate Northern View was a weather forecast calling for 3 to 5 inches of additional rain Friday.
That forecast also prompted university officials to send home all non-essential personnel home by 10 a.m. Any additional rain would have forced the closure of all bridges over the Kishwaukee River (only two remained open at that time, and only one by afternoon) and prevented many employees from reaching home.
That rain, however, stayed south of DeKalb County, provoking a collective sigh of relief. Warm dry weather for the balance of the weekend provided further breathing room.
“Had the rain predicted for Friday actually materialized, much of campus would have been in serious trouble,” said Mike Saari, director of the Physical Plant. “As it turned out, the damage was contained to about 10 percent of campus.”
Saari credited the millions of dollars in storm control projects (completed in the late 1990s and early 2000s) with preventing a re-run of flooding that occurred in 1996 and caused millions of dollars in damage. He speculated that the improvements spared the campus from much more significant damage to Anderson Hall, the Neptune Hall complex, the Music Building and probably to the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology and Barsema Hall.
Even with those improvements in place, however, the floodwaters created tremendous challenges for university employees who scrambled from one trouble area to the next.
Crews were kept busy sandbagging, pumping water out of basements and steam tunnels, and cleaning and sanitizing areas swamped by floodwater. They also worked at replacing a 1,400-foot stretch of underground electrical cable that shorted out during Thursday’s rain. Crews were able to quickly reroute electricity from other lines to most buildings, but as of Monday morning, Anderson Hall was still operating on generator power.
Those efforts left Saari almost at a loss for words.
“I don’t know how to describe how great our people were,” Saari said.
“For 72 straight hours our radio frequency was going non-stop with people asking for equipment and materials, asking for help, shifting manpower from one location to the next. It was constant,” he added. “But our employees never let up for a minute. Everyone knew where to go, what to do and how to deal with the situation, and they all worked together. That attitude really saved the day.”
Word arrived late Sunday that the university might be able to recoup some of its clean-up costs thanks to Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s declaration of DeKalb County as a disaster area in the wake of last week’s flooding.