By Joseph Barrios

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Officials are still assessing damage to the UA campus that resulted from a monsoon storm last Friday.

Hail, rain and high winds pelted buildings around campus, causing structural damage to rooftops and windows and flooding streets on and around campus. No injuries were reported as a result of the storm.

Members of University of Arizona Facilities Management and Risk Management departments have scattered around campus to see what kinds of damage the university sustained.

"It's just amazing how much this storm effected this campus. It was a very unusual storm," said Alan Lee, university insurance officer.

It is not yet possible to estimate how much it will cost to repair damages on campus because not all of the damage has been reported, Lee said. Replacing damaged and uprooted trees alone could cost up to $40,000. Damage assessments should be completed Thursday.

"There was very little of campus that wasn't effected. It's a major amount of work to survey all of it," Lee said.

Water damage occured in several residence halls around campus, including Coronado which had puddles on several floors and roof damage. Arizona-Sonora also had puddles and a window broken by wind and hail.

Residence Life Director Jim Van Arsdel said it was fortunate that most of the rooms were empty because residence life staff members were cleaning up and getting ready for students to move in.

"A lot of our staff had to spend Saturday night extracting water and cleaning up all over again," Van Arsdel said.

Minimal damage resulted to the new residence hall under construction between Graham-Greenlee and Apache-Santa Cruz. Concrete blocks set on Friday had to be reset on Saturday, Van Arsdel said.

The fence surrounding the Frank Sancet Field was blown down during the storm.

A 15 feet by 20 feet piece of roofing was blown off of Old Main, and several pieces of the building's railing and floorboards were blown off during a volley of hail, wind and water, said Sue Kent, assistant to the dean of students.

Strong winds caused leakage and caved in the ceiling tiles of a lab at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in the Space Sciences building, said Joan Weinberg, laboratory assistant director. Water blew in through windows and a fire alarm was accidently set off by the storm for about an hour before maintainance could shut it off. No equipment was damaged.

Overall, Tucson has seen less stormy weather this summer than in previous years, said Jim Meyer, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Tucson. But weather patterns can change from year to year without the best results, he said.

"We thought we were going to have a nice monsoon," Meyer said. Read Next Article