Colorado State Programs & People

University History 1997 Flood

Book rescuer takes on the role of Mr. Freeze

Published July 2007

Written by Paul Miller and originally published in "Comment," August 25, 1997.

Greg Bartch never thought he’d be part of a long line of book rescuers, but then, he rarely knows where his job will take him next.

Bartch works for UCISCO, a Proxair subsidiary based in Houston that supplies industrial gases to businesses around the world. But, supplying gas for non-nuclear catalytic reactors is probably as ordinary as his job gets.

Liquid nitrogen to the rescue

One project last year took him to the movie set of Batman in Long Beach, Calif., where he created fog effects with liquid artificial air. Another job brought him to Colorado State last week, where he fed liquid nitrogen into tractor-trailers to freeze boxes full of books.

In Long Beach, he worked with movie crews on special effects for Batman and watched Arnold Schwarzenegger thump around as the surreal, titanically costumed Mr. Freeze. All the impressive stuff of Hollywood, though, didn’t compare to the efforts of hundreds of people salvaging books from Morgan Library on campus.

"It was pretty amazing to see how films are made," Bartch said. "What you think you see on a movie set doesn’t have any relationship to reality. Ice is made out of plastic and rocks are only Styrofoam, but on screen the effects are real."

"But who ever heard of freezing books? I’m pretty impressed with what (Colorado State) is doing to salvage a difficult situation."

Half-million wet library books

That difficult situation, of course, was the flood of July 28, when flash floods came barging down from the foothills west of town, inundating the basement of Morgan Library and other buildings on campus. Close to a half-million books, monographs and bound journals in the library were damaged by the murky water, but as soon as waters subsided there wasn’t much time to stand around wringing hands. The books had to be removed and placed in frozen storage as quickly as possible to prevent mold and mildew from permanently damaging the volumes.

And that’s where Greg Bartch came in. Shaped somewhat like Schwarzenegger himself but without the buff, Bartch stood last week beside his Peterbilt truck in the parking lot on the west side of the library, and talked about really cold stuff.

Refrigerated tractor-trailers

His tanker, 74,000 pounds of engine, chrome, wheels, valves and pipes, sported a diamond-shaped sign on the tank that said, "Non-Flammable Refrigerated Liquid Nitrogen." It may have been a queasy experience for some people, standing next to a bulging tank of gas resting on armpit-high tires, but Bartch fit right into the scene, an easygoing giant dressed in a natty red T-shirt and yellow-tinted driver’s glasses. Moreover, he was well aware of hazards and followed safety regulations with all due care, something he admitted with unabashed sincerity.

"Crews load the books onto refrigerated tractor-trailers, then drivers bring the rigs over to me," he said. "We pump liquid nitrogen into the truck, and as soon as the liquid hits, the books start cooling down in a hurry. They’ll hit 30 or 40 below zero and stay frozen until restoration folks get a chance to look at them and salvage what they can."

Bartch explained that the boiling point of liquid nitrogen is 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The minute it hits air, it warms up and turns into a gas, which puts the deep-freeze to whatever it touches.

As if to illustrate, a tractor trailer driver backed a rig close to the rear of Bartch’s tanker. With the help of another man, Bartch fed a long, black pipe along the length of the trailer floor. He shut the doors and stuffed foam insulation in the cracks, tapped a connecting collar tight with a brass mallet, then busied himself with valves and gauges at the back of his rig. The faint hissing sound of gas floated in the air.

"This is where it gets interesting," Bartch said. He was in full safety regalia, including hard hat, safety goggles and blue insulating gloves. "This trailer will start talking now." As the nitrogen changed from liquid to gas in the bowels of the trailer, white vapor started pouring out of the back like heavy fog, and before long the trailer started popping and crackling and groaning, as if some monster inside were trying to escape.

Eerie scene

Bartch stood close to the back of the rig, tweaking valves and tapping with his brass mallet while the vapor gathered strength, flowing down across the back of the doors and spreading along the ground in a dense, chilly fog. Bartch’s legs were obscured by the fog, turning him into a floating torso, while other workers hustled in and out of the swirling vapors to place a sheet of plywood over the back tires of the trailer. Otherwise, Bartch said, the rubber would freeze and break off in chunks.

The cracking and heaving continued for many minutes, long enough to create an eerie scene, a movie without the screen, a Mr. Freeze without the costume. Rivulets of liquid nitrogen flowed out the bottom of the trailer and froze white circles on the pavement, and, when the wind was right, the frigid fog crept all over the place like a living creature looking for a place to hide.

A surprisingly loud pop emerged from the trailer, but Bartch, breaking the magic of the moment a bit, said all that noise wasn’t doing any harm. It was just the normal sound of metal shrinking as it froze.

Books rolled away to cold storage

After about five minutes the show ended, and reality returned to normal, mundane dimensions. Bartch removed the frosted, whitened pipe from the trailer and shut the doors, and another load of books rolled away to cold storage.

Bartch made some notes in a log, then arranged his tools to get ready for the next trailer of books. For the first time in 20 minutes he scanned the horizon, settling his gaze on the heavy clouds rolling in from the northwest.

"Looks like we might get hit," he said.

Giant defender of library books

The clouds certainly looked ominous, which gave rise to a question that hung unspoken in the air: Could the thunderheads spawn another tidal wave of destruction on campus, in Fort Collins?

Suddenly the scene seemed surreal again: people strolling calmly around campus under a bank of clouds that could give life to gardens or cause misery, where hundreds and hundreds of people at that moment were pooling resources in the aftermath of the flood to help each other recover, and how that hard work could be embodied in the wonder and expertise of this truck driver standing serenely in the parking lot, our own version of Mr. Freeze, the good-natured giant of liquid nitrogen, defender of library books.

More about the flood

• Downpour Turns Into Nightmare
• CSUPD Dispatchers Narrowly Escape
• Lory Student Center Inundated
• Morgan Library Wall and Foundation Explodes
• Academic Offices Annihilated
• Shocking Journey To Campus
• The Morning After
• Logistics and Communication Challenges
• Bureaucratic and Fiscal Hurdles
• Library Opens for Fall Semester
• Heavily Damaged Lory Student Center Renovated
• Faculty Move On
• Theater and Music Programs Suffer Heavy Losses
• President Yates Issues a Challenge

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.