 Maintenance crews made quuick work of the fallen trees, choppin g them into managable peices and mulching the trunks only hours after the storm settled down.
[Click to enlarge]
|
|
 Fallen comrades: the arbor rich state of Oregon and Washington are missing many trees after the 100-plus mile-an-hour winds swept through on Dec. 14. [Click to enlarge]
|
|
|
|
All was not quiet on the Western front this past break-while most students were spending Dec. 14 at home, the same massive windstorm that devastated the Northwest also tore across Western's campus. Throughout the course of the night, several trees fell in various areas on campus. The Administration building, a few parking lots and the Natural Science building were all affected. The hardest-hit area, however, was right outside Heritage Hall, where five ash trees were felled.
"It was a natural place for the wind to circle," said Kevin Hughes, Western's Landscape Maintenance Supervisor. "It was like a twister."
On a wider scale, the storm caused hundreds of thousands of Oregonians and Washingtonians to be left without power and did incredible amounts of damage. In addition, it claimed numerous lives.
Locally-although Monmouth did not suffer damage on the same scale as Portland and Seattle-the effects of the intense weather can also be seen.
After heavy rains saturated the ground throughout the day, many trees on campus were not able to stand up against the strong winds in the evening. Many of the trees that were destroyed in the storm simply fell over with their root systems still partly intact at the base of the tree.
The final tally for storm-related damages on campus was around $1,800. Amazingly, the trees did not damage any buildings across campus, thus keeping the cost relatively low. Still, the whole process of cutting the trees, removing the stumps, and repairing the ground is time-consuming and took more than a week.
The biggest problem trees were a 70-foot fir next to the Residential Service Center and one of the five ash trees that fell near Heritage. It was discovered leaning against-surprisingly unbroken-window.
"We hooked ropes to pull the tree leaning against the windows," Hughes said, "and then cut it down from there." Despite that interesting situation, the 70-foot fir that fell near the RSC proved to be the most difficult of the lot: it was the only one that required outside help to remove. Other areas where trees fell-or were damaged-include The Grove, Parking Lot J, and the areas behind the Werner Center and in front of Hamersly Library.
Talk of replanting trees outside Heritage haven't been discussed yet, nothing can happen until the ground has time to recover. In the end, a combination of 15 maple, pine, sycamore, fir and ash trees fell across the campus, making up 1 percent of the campus's more than 1,500 trees.
