Buildings damaged from storm

A storm of blinding wind and rain that swept through campus over Memorial Day weekend has left two of the campus's oldest buildings in need of repair. The storm shattered windows, ripped down gutters, and caused disarray to offices in those buildings.\nThe storm, which uprooted two separate trees causing them to smash into Owen and Franklin Hall, happened late afternoon on Saturday, May 25, leaving the University in charge of repairing the damage.\nMichael Jasiak, former University Information Technology Services employee in Owen Hall, was in the building during the storm.\n"I was watching the storm from my window," Jasiak said. "I saw the dark clouds and I kind of got a bad feeling about it right at the outset."\nJasiak, who was recently appointed manager of digital media services at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, was moving his belongings from Owen Hall to his truck, which was parked just outside of the building.\nJasiak was looking out his window toward the Indiana Memorial Union when the storm hit.\n"The union building disappeared, like somebody dropped a gray curtain from it," Jasiak explained. "At that point, I heard a bit of a groan."\nThat groan was a huge maple tree beginning its descent, right onto Owen Hall, and right onto Jasiak's truck.\n"I saw the tree go right past my window," Jasiak said.\nThe tree hit the building near the second floor, shattering a large picture window in the office of Judy Wertheim, the executive associate dean of the School of Continuing Studies.\nThe tree left the office wide open for the storm's fierce rains to come through, soaking Wertheim's office.\n"It was very fortunate that it happened on a Saturday," Wertheim said. \nThere was no permanent damage to Wertheim's office, with only a broken computer monitor, a scratched table, and a few broken ceiling tiles.\nThe truck, however, suffered over $12,000 worth of damage, Jasiak said.\nOwen Hall was not the storm's only victim on campus. \nA falling tree hit the windows to Franklin Hall's registration center about twenty minutes later, suffering only minor damages.\n"There was a lot of water that came in," said registrar Roland Cote.\nThe University's risk management and building maintenance departments are now looking at both buildings to help clean up the mess and to assess the damages.\nDave Hurst, manager of the campus division of building maintenance, has most of his near 30 person staff working to get the huge trees cut up and hauled off within the next few weeks, before the start of IU's orientation.\n"We're often times driven by what's going on on campus, event-wise," Hurst said.\nThe University's office of risk management is in charge of assessing the damage to both buildings. Larry Stephens, the office's director, is currently uncertain of the extent of the damages.\nIn the meantime, Wertheim's office is almost back to normal, with two of the three broken windows already replaced.\n"They did a wonderful job of cleaning up after the destruction," Wertheim said.\nJasiak is disappointed that that huge maple that crashed into Wertheim's office is now being carried off piece by piece.\n"It was such an old and beautiful tree that squirrels really enjoyed playing around that has now fallen and is being carted off," he said.