Storms destroy more trees, leave most campus buildings unscathed

The powerful line of storms that hammered most of the Midwest and swept through Bloomington Wednesday downed many campus trees, but caused little damage to IU buildings.

“The damage was almost all trees,” IU director of media relations Larry MacIntyre said. “Whole trees, but almost no structural damage.”

Tenth street was littered with trees, branches and crumpled sheets of metal after the storm reportedly produced rotating winds where the street intersects with Fee Lane.

A tree in front of IU Student Legal Services on Seventh Street was toppled. The building was not damaged, but IU Provost Karen Hanson ordered it closed as a precautionary measure, MacIntyre said.

The only structural damage that could be confirmed, he said, was a tree causing a small amount of damage to the entrance way of Morrison Hall.

Power was cut off to some buildings due to trees falling on electrical lines, but Duke Energy had already begun restoring power by Thursday morning.

Students were alerted to the onslaught of dangerous weather by multiple notifications from the University’s emergency alert system, IU-Notify.

The system, to the annoyance of some, sent out at least ten different alerts through e-mail and text messages.

Half of those were notifying students of a tornado warning for the area, each followed by an “all clear” alert a several minutes later.

“Our policy is to notify students of the tornado warning and notify them of the all clear,” said Deborah Fletcher, director of IU Emergency Management and Continuity. “Every time a new warning is issued, we issue a new message.”

She said the office considered just sending out one blanket alert but, as the line of storms lasted all afternoon and into the evening, there was concern that people would just assume that IU-Notify had forgotten to send out an “all clear.”

“It’s better to warn people consistently than worry about annoying them,” Fletcher said. “It’s more important to send out multiple alerts; even it might be more troublesome.”

The line of storms came in the wake of another powerful storm on Monday that caused more than 10,000 power outages in Monroe County, and destroyed as many as 80 campus trees.