Falling trees, flying branches and crashing debris from the Feb. 7 windstorm caused at least $60,000 in damage to the University, according to preliminary reports.
The report is part of a claim the University — along with other Lane County agencies — will make to Oregon Emergency Management in hopes of convincing Gov. John Kitzhaber to ask for federal assistance.
OEM is a state agency that plans and prepares for disasters and attempts to manage those disasters once they hit the state.
Linda Cook, emergency management supervisor for Lane County, said OEM is currently “number crunching” and should give Lane County its decision within the next two weeks. If the OEM board decides the storm requires federal assistance, it will be left up to Kitzhaber to attempt to convince federal authorities.
Representatives for the OEM board could not be contacted by press time.
George Hecht, director of Campus Operations, said the University moved quickly to document physical destruction and tally
the damages.
“We will give them a pretty good picture of what was going on after the storm,” he said.
Tom Fitzpatrick, director of public safety on campus, said his office has met with state and federal officials twice since the storm and expects to see federal officials again within the next week to 10 days. Don’t expect any decisions soon, he said.
“We’ll be working through this thing over next several weeks, if not months,” he said.
The damage report claims the University will have to spend $40,000 to replace 14 fallen mature trees and $20,000 to repair broken windows and damaged roofs caused by flying branches and other debris. Some of the damages include patching 20 holes in the roof of the Robinson Theatre and repairing part of the Many Nations Longhouse roof. Also, wind blew off two doors on the south side of Prince Lucien Campbell and shattered two windows in Lawrence Hall.
The windstorm, bearing 70 mph gusts, downed trees and hurtled broken branches through area windows and roofs as it descended on the Eugene-Springfield area. The damage was so quick and severe that the Eugene Water and Electric Board could not restore power to some Eugene areas, including the neighborhood directly west of the University, for nearly
72 hours.
EWEB announced that it incurred more than $1.5 million in damages from the storm, including broken poles, power lines, electric substations damage and overtime, according to EWEB spokesman
Lance Robertson.
Operations manager Ron Bloom said 20 people worked until 10 p.m. Thursday night to clear pathways and fallen trees. At least 10 of those workers returned at 4:00 a.m. the next morning and worked through
the weekend.
“We don’t plan for anything like that in 40 years,” he said. “These kinds of things are impossible to predict.”
Bloom said his department has nearly finished cutting and removing the fallen trees. While the wet ground is their only remaining obstacle, operations hopes to reuse the wood for remodeling projects around campus such as replacing doors, walls and building cabinets in different buildings.
“We try to do as much as possible to recycle the wood,” Bloom said.
E-mail community editor John Liebhardt
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