University History 1997 Flood

Downpour Turns Into Nightmare

Published July 2007

Shortly after 10 p.m. on July 28, 1997, Vice President for Administrative Services Gerard "Gerry" Bomotti received a phone call from Colorado State University Police Chief Donn Hopkins notifying him of heavy flooding on the main campus. At home three miles south of campus, Bomotti looked outdoors and saw wet ground from recent rainfall, but little to warrant a sense of emergency.

Flood water on the CSU Oval

Flood waters submerged the historic CSU Oval in July 1997. This photo was taken after water levels had begun to recede.

Accordingly, he told the chief to keep him updated. Soon, Hopkins called again. The police department had been forced to abandon its offices in the Student Health Services Building basement.

"How much water are you talking about?" Bomotti asked.

"It’s all the way to the ceiling, and the library’s flooded too," Hopkins replied.

Fast rising water west of campus

Beginning about 8:30 p.m., city police and fire district emergency dispatchers started getting 911 calls from people needing help in neighborhoods west of the campus—a man trapped in his floating car near Hughes Stadium, homes with collapsing basement walls, a ceiling threatening to fall at the Campus West Theatre.

International House early chaos

On the north side of West Elizabeth Street at the International House, a CSU housing facility for foreign students, So Yon Bueno recalled the chaos and concerns of that evening:

People were telling me water was coming into their apartments, and before I knew it we had a foot of water. We tried calling 911, but the phone lines were down.

So Yon Bueno, Intn'l House

"People were telling me water was coming into their apartments, and before I knew it we had a foot of water. We tried calling 911, but the phone lines were down. The fire alarms were going off and water just kept getting deeper, so we went knocking on doors to tell people to evacuate. We got everybody out, and in minutes it seemed, we had 3 or 4 feet of water in the bottom apartments."

All 150 residents evacuated safely, huddling together on a grassy knoll northeast of the complex in the pouring rain; some had lost everything except the soaked clothes they were wearing.

Hazardous material disaster prevented

One of the residents of International House, graduate student Jim Abraham, was in his office that night at the Environmental Health Building when he detected water leakage there. After alerting the Environmental Health Services staff he and a co-worker spent the rest of the night inspecting every building housing hazardous material and, where necessary, removing it from the flood’s path. In doing so, and at considerable personal danger, he prevented a potential disaster. After an exhausting night he returned to the International House to find his own belongings destroyed.

Runoff surges into Moby parking lot

The intersection of Shields and West Elizabeth streets had become a virtual river, and it was here, about 9:30 p.m., that the massive runoff surged into the Moby Arena parking lot where it divided, flowing past either side of that building. Fortunately, a fluke of timing prevented a potential disaster. Craig Sommer, director of Conference Services, described the situation:

3,500 high school kids in Moby

"At the time of the flood we had several groups on campus, one of which was a youth group of 3,500 high school kids. [They] had reserved the Student Center—all of the basement areas, the game room, the Ramskeller. . . [and] were scheduled to be over [there] at nine o’clock that evening. But luckily their program at Moby. . .got delayed. . . And so, by the time they were wrapping up, at about nine-thirty, that’s when it was really getting nasty."

"The leaders looked outside. On the south side of Moby, there was basically a river coming across the athletic fields several feet deep, and on the north side. . .the water was several feet deep going down the street. The leaders decided, we can’t allow the kids go out in this, and ended up keeping [them] there. It was about ten o’ clock when the Student Center basement started to fill up with water. We would have had hundreds of fatalities — it filled up that quickly."

More about the flood

Historical accounts in this series of articles, were compiled and edited from Democracy's University - A History of Colorado State University 1970-2003, written by James E. Hansen II (University Press of Colorado, 2007).

To order a book, call (970) 491-6198, e-mail Resource.Center@ucm.colostate.edu or visit 115 General Services Building on Colorado State’s main campus. Cost is $27, not including tax or shipping. The books are also available at the CSU Bookstore in the Lory Student Center.