University History - 1997 Flood

Lory Student Center Inundated

Published July 2007

The Lory Student Center, housed a theater, the CSU Bookstore and offices for numerous student organizations, including the campus media center. Its bottom floor also contained dining and recreational facilities that the 3,500 young people now trapped at Moby Arena had planned to use.

Photo of a chair in a tree outside of LSC.

A chair perched in a tree in the aftermath of the wall of water that inundated the LSC.

Six staff people were on duty preparing for this group, and about 8 p.m. game room manager Connie Lane recalled that "we were mopping up water coming in. It didn’t seem like an unusual storm, but we thought maybe the building had structural problems, because water was seeping through the wall. We got a shop vac out, and we were emptying it for the third time when we saw the water blowing through the bottom panels of the doors."

Meanwhile, Brain Haley, a student staff member, was working outside in the rain trying to move water away from the building’s upper west doors with a snow shovel. "I thought I was getting ahead," he said, "when I noticed a cardboard box floating past. Then I saw a 2-by-4 float past, and I started wondering what was going on. When I saw a big trash can floating past I knew something serious was going on." The sound of breaking glass below and inside the building confirmed his worst fears.

Dam of water six feet high blew out doors

Then with nowhere else to go, the water burst through walls and doors engulfing the whole lower level. The bookstore’s entire $5 million inventory for fall semester classes turned into slimy pulp.

The ensuing destruction is compellingly described by CSU journalists Kathy Hayes and Mark Minor:
For a short time, Lory Student Center acted like a huge dam, holding back the water that had turned the lagoon into a lake. The water rose as high as six feet against the west side of the building before it blew out the doors next to the Ramskeller. The deluge roared into the Cave and game room, then swirled back around the bowling alley into the Ramskeller.

There it engulfed video games, furniture, pool tables and vending machines, smashing them into a mass of rubble. "Then with nowhere else to go, the water burst through walls and doors engulfing the whole lower level. The bookstore’s entire $5 million inventory for fall semester classes turned into slimy pulp."

Student media offices gutted

Offices of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, the Silver Spruce, KCSU and Campus TV were gutted. Water exited the building through lower doors, merged with runoff in the north side parking lot and headed east for the Oval area of the campus, where it inflicted heavy damage there and to buildings enroute. Meanwhile, a separate runoff massing at the lagoon channeled into the natural drainage of Arthur Ditch where it moved diagonally toward Morgan Library, the Eddy Building and the Education Building.

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.