More than 2.5 inches of rain soaked campus Tuesday, overflowing the Eugene Millrace, prompting a scramble to place sandbags to protect Barnhart Hall and leaving the Urban Farm under more than a foot of muddy water.
Rain water also penetrated Agate Annex, Allen and Friendly halls, causing minor damage.
The University received 2.58 inches of rain as of Tuesday evening, with a day-high rate of 1.2 inches falling at 1 p.m., according to the UO Internet Weather Station. Although the forecast calls for rain each day this week, George Hecht, director of campus operations for Facilities Services, said he expects University workers to catch up with the flooding by Thursday.
Andy Bryant, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service, called the amount of showers “very unusual” for this time of year. He said it has rained about 240 percent more than what’s normal during late December and early January, but because records are kept for days and calendar months, January probably won’t be a record-setting month.
The trouble started when light rain began falling at about 10 p.m. Monday. It intensified over night.
By early Tuesday morning, personnel at Barnhart had placed calls to maintenance workers about rising water there, and crews had already used earth-moving machinery to build protective berms along University property bordering the Millrace north of Franklin Blvd.
By 8 a.m., water was rushing across the bike path along the Millrace into the Urban Farm. Crews returned to the farm at about 9:45 a.m. to reinforce the berms. They moved to Barnhart to place sandbags at about 11 a.m., by which time the farm was nearly covered in water.
The University distributed two pallets of white sandbags at Barnhart Hall and the Urban Farm areas. Sandbagging efforts stopped the bulk of the water from reaching Barnhart’s south doors.
Hecht said crews worked all day to keep drains clear and keep back the water from Barnhart and several other buildings.
“We had quite a scare at Barnhart,” he said. “(Water) seemed to be flowing on the sidewalk and also from the Millrace right into Barnhart.”
Hecht calls the sidewalk-flooding “sheet-flow” – a phenomenon that occurs when a fairly level area gets “so much water that it just has a sheet of water across the top.”
“The problem is that the soil is so saturated that there’s no place for the water to go,” Hecht said. Sidewalks being underwater is very rare on campus, he said.
Surveying the Urban Farm on Tuesday morning, Landscape Architecture Department Head Stanton Jones said the flooding was the most he has seen during his 12 years with the University. He called recent rains a “significant storm event,” saying that much of the area sits on a flood plain.
“This is one of the reasons you don’t build on low-lying areas next to waterways,” he said.
Wearing a blue rain jacket and calf-high black rubber boots, junior Caleb Laughlin waded between garden stakes at the Urban Farm. A member of the Urban Farm class this term, he stumbled upon the flooding and stopped to take a closer look.
“Luckily I brought my boots,” he said.
His class will be working to redesign the farm this term, but they hadn’t considered flooding, he said.
“This might pose a whole different design challenge,” he said.
Water also flowed under the Wilkenson House near the bike trail. Nearly a foot of water pooled around several cars in a nearby parking lot.
University employees working at Agate Annex said Wednesday’s leaks were a repeat of the early January flood that University spokeswoman Mary Stanik estimated to cost $25,000.
A three-man crew pumped water and dried the hall’s floor for most of the day. Three water pumps were barely enough to keep up with the water until the rain slowed around 2 p.m.
At the EMU and the Student Recreation Center, buckets caught rainwater dripping from roof leaks.
At the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, water pumps failed at low areas, so crews installed temporary pumps.
Temporary pumps were also installed at Barnhart.
“If we just have a normal amount of rain, I think we’ll be OK,” Hecht said. “But when it comes down really fast and it comes down in such a way that it overwhelms the various pump systems we have, it makes it really tough.”
In Eugene, police urged drivers to be cautious and avoid flooded areas, including westbound I-105 between Coburg Road and Delta Highway and Pearl Street at East 12th Avenue. East 19th Avenue between Pearl Street and High Street near South Eugene High School was also closed to traffic.
