UH opens classes
as cleanup continues

Some classes are being relocated
from several buildings that
are still without power

Classes are set to resume today at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, but cleanup from floodwaters that swept through the campus Saturday continues and some buildings will be without power until the weekend.

TO HELP Anyone interested in volunteering in the cleanup effort can call the UH chancellor's office at 956-7486. To donate to Hamilton Library's disaster relief fund, call the UH Foundation at 956-8849.

"The first 36 to 48 hours after Saturday night's flood were critical to preserving as much of our research work as we could," said UH-Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert. "And now we are able to get students back on campus with just two days of missed classes."

UH spokesman Jim Manke said classes will be relocated from five buildings still without power. Classes normally scheduled in the agricultural sciences building, Sherman Laboratory, Hamilton Library and the architecture portables will be moved, he said.

New locations for the classes will be posted on UH's Web site (www.hawaii.edu) or on affected buildings. The UH parking structure, food service facilities and campus shuttles will be operating normally.

"Our emergency response team has done a magnificent job to restore essential facilities and services as quickly as possible given the extent of damage to the campus and the power distribution system," Englert said.

Manke said an estimate on the flood's damage is not yet available and will likely take weeks to tally. He also said classes canceled because of the flood will be made up at the end of the semester in place of study days.

Meanwhile, cleanup continues on the Manoa campus. UH employees and volunteers from local high schools and community groups worked yesterday for a fourth day to get classrooms and laboratories cleaned of mud and debris.

At Hamilton Library, salvaged materials are being held in freezers to prevent mold formation, and a mainland preservation expert has volunteered to help in the effort until mid-November.

The library, which sustained some of the heaviest damage in the flood, is closed until further notice.

Roughly 230,000 maps and historical photos, more than 100 computers and thousands of books were damaged when an 8- to 12-foot-high wall of water deluged the library's football field-size basement, said UH spokeswoman Arlene Abiang. She said an estimate on the research library's damage is not yet available.

Manoa scientists whose experiments were affected by the flood say they are still assessing damage and determining what can be salvaged.

At the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, dozens of specimens in freezers or incubators were ruined because of the days-long power outage. The university's biomedical sciences building, which houses the world-renowned Institute for Biogenesis Research, was also hard hit and sustained millions of dollars in water damage.

"Certainly, a number of experiments were lost," said Douglas Vincent, CTAHR's interim associate dean and director of research. "But we don't know the fullest extent of things that were lost. ... We're sort of saving what we can right now."