US Naval Academy under 4 feet of water

Isabel's surge ruins labs and equipment

By Gretchen Parker, Associated Press, 9/24/2003

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Tropical Storm Isabel flooded classrooms and laboratories at the Naval Academy, destroying electrical systems and computers and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage on the military college's waterfront campus.

Half of the academy's classroom space was still unusable yesterday, and some classes had to be held in the auditorium, field house, and basketball arena, said Commander Rod Gibbons, an academy spokesman.

"We're in disaster recovery here at the academy," said Gibbons, who stressed that the buildings -- some of which date to the early 1900s -- are structurally fine. About 120,000 square feet of labs were soaked.

Hot water was restored yesterday morning to Bancroft Hall, the dormitory that houses all 4,000 students, Gibbons said. But it was still too dangerous to restore electricity to other buildings where the basements were still flooded.

Academy officials were still assessing the damage and did not release an official estimate, saying only that the cost would be in the tens of millions of dollars. It may be weeks before the staff knows how much equipment can be salvaged.

Isabel's high-water line was visible on hallway and classroom walls yesterday. The clocks had stopped at 10:50 p.m., the moment the electricity went out on Thursday.

The chemistry, aerospace, and electrical engineering laboratories suffered the most damage when Isabel forced a 7.5-foot storm surge out of Chesapeake Bay and the Severn River onto campus Thursday night. The 338-acre campus sits where the river flows into the bay, and significant areas are built on landfill that is particularly vulnerable to flooding.

"It's just sad. It's all gone now," Derek Baker, an academy machinist for 22 years, said of the 12 destroyed labs.

Yesterday, he was helping to move equipment and office furniture out of buildings that were slowly being dried by ventilators powered by portable generators. Generators also ran pumps spewing water out of basements.

Staff members had piled sandbags against doorways Thursday as Isabel ran ashore on North Carolina's Outer Banks and plowed northward across Virginia, but they were not enough to hold back the storm surge. No one was injured.

Rising water quickly blocked a bridge connecting the two halves of campus, said Lieutenant Julia Mason, a campus spokeswoman. But no one realized how high the water had risen until Friday, when dawn showed that waterfront benches had been submerged out of view.

The water was 4 feet deep in the first floors of some buildings.