CSUN Aids Colorado College Hit by Flood

Cal State Northridge--a reluctant expert at rebuilding ivory towers laid low by nature--is planning to share its hard-earned knowledge with flood-ravaged Colorado State University.

CSUN has agreed to help out even as its president, Blenda J. Wilson, and the provost at Colorado State, David A. Young, vie for the same job. Both are finalists to become president of Wayne State University in Detroit.

“This is what you do when a fellow institution is in need,” said CSUN spokeswoman Carmen Ramos-Chandler. “When we were in need, lots of schools helped us.”

Indeed, numerous institutions rushed to the aid of CSUN in the wake of 1994’s Northridge earthquake, providing everything from library services to engineering experts.

With $190 million of $321 million worth of repairs now complete at CSUN, Federal Emergency Management Agency earthquake specialist Jim Buika asked university officials last week if they would be willing to help another school in need.

“I was very impressed with what Cal State [Northridge] was doing,” said the San Francisco-based Buika. “I knew that they could lend a hand.”

At Colorado State, 25 campus buildings were damaged when a flash flood swept through Fort Collins, a city of 108,000 about 60 miles north of Denver, on July 28, killing five and injuring dozens of others.

Some 450,000 books, periodicals and monographs were soaked or lost when muddy waters flooded the university’s main library. Thousands of new and used texts in the school’s bookstore were also destroyed.

Damage estimates at the university have risen from $40 million in the days following the flood to between $100 million and $135 million. FEMA will pay 75% of the bill, with the state responsible for the remaining 25%.

But if CSUN’s experience following the earthquake--which was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history--is any indication, rounding up the dollars and getting Colorado State back in working order will be a sizable task.

Colorado “doesn’t have much money in the emergency fund--and it wasn’t just the university that got damaged,” said Art Elbert, CSUN’s vice president for administration and finance, and a personal friend of Young.

“They’ve got to get class opened up in about three weeks. I pledged our help in every way possible.”

CSUN reopened just less than one month after the earthquake.

“We’ve been there, done that,” said Elbert.