University History - 1997 Flood

The Morning After

Published July 2007

At 6 a.m. on Tuesday, July 29, Gerry Bomotti reached his office in the Administration Building, where water levels had dropped nearly seven feet from those observed a few hours earlier. He had already spent much of the night on the phone at home where he kept a copy of CSU’s Emergency Operations Plan.

Photo of damaged parking lot

Damage from the flash flood in the parking lot west of South College Gym and east of the Mason Street railroad tracks.

Immediate priority restoring power

An immediate priority entailed restoring power, and at 2 a.m. electrician Ed Sonday, precariously perched on a ladder, had begun replacing damaged 35-pound fuses atop telephone poles on Pitkin Street near Ingersoll Hall. As the new day dawned one-third of the campus had sufficient power to sustain lighting, communications, pumps and blowers.

"We needed to get electricity up and running as soon as we could," recalled Sonday, "to provide normal power as well as for lights and emergency pumping, but we also had to make sure everything was safe before turning it on."

Earlier he broken into a utility compartment on the south side of the library to turn off emergency power generated by submerged transformers that created the risk of high voltage electricity in the surrounding water.

Assessing damage

Photo of flooded parking lot

The parking lot north of the Lory Student Center and Engineering building remained flooded on July 29, 1997.

Bomotti and Interim President Judson Harper quickly began a walking tour to assess the damage. Their ultimate concern was the health and safety of CSU’s faculty, staff and students. Accordingly, summer school classes were cancelled until a more complete assessment could be made.

Although it would take some time to assess the full extent of the flood’s devastation, the visual evidence was overwhelming—offices, classrooms and dormitories completely filled with water; broken furniture, equipment and books scattered across lawns and parking lots; moreover, scores of television and print journalists, at least for a day or two, were making Fort Collins and Colorado State University focal points for lead stories.

Vice president for student affairs Keith Miser, for example, learned of the Fort Collins flood while viewing a CNN newscast during a visit to Belize on university business. Having arrived only the day before, he immediately arranged to return home.

Five key recovery priorities

Gerald Bomotti and members of the Emergency Management Team quickly defined five key recovery priorities:

  1. Protect health and safety
  2. Respond to personal and professional losses of staff and faculty
  3. Resume summer school classes as soon possible
  4. Institute necessary cleanup and repair activity
  5. Prepare for the fall semester with as little disruption as possible

From the outset it was decided that existing summer and fall class schedules would be met. The success of these priorities depended upon instantaneous action and evaluations by local personnel and appropriate outside assistance; CSU’s resources alone could not possibly address the magnitude of problems wrought by this disaster.

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.