Strong winds cause campus damage

Winds estimated at speeds up to 50 mph blew a tree down on the Children’s Center as well as another on the north end of Eisenwinter, NIC’s soccer field, and caused the closure of Sunspot at Yap-Keehn-Um Beach due to unsafe conditions on Labor Day.

The Children’s Center was closed today as crews worked to remove the tree from the roof.

Maintenance chainsawed the fallen tree on top of the Children’s Center on Tuesday morning to get the building back to safe conditions for reopening Wednesday.

“I’m sure a quick closure caused some inconvenience to enrolled families and staff, but safety had to be the first priority,” said Kathleen Miller Green, assistant professor of child development. “I’m quite glad I wasn’t there.”

Garry Stark, director of facilities operations, said they hope to have everything cleared up to reopen tomorrow. He said the tree caused a board to be knocked loose up top, as well as damage a couple of light fixtures. However, there were no broken tresses.

“I was really shocked,” Stark said. “It (the tree) crunched the soffit and damaged that but snapped off when it hit the tresses. I couldn’t see any structural damage in the attic.”

Idaho Counties Risk Management Program covers all of campus including the Children’s Center, and Stark said he put out a claim for someone to come look at the damage today. As for now, Stark plans to have crews work on getting the building back to safe conditions as well as prepared in case of rain so the Children’s Center can re-open Wednesday.

“I’ll be glad to be back in my office tomorrow,” Green said. 

Campus maintenance workers remove a fallen tree on the north end of NIC’s soccer field Tuesday morning.

Campus maintenance removed the fallen tree from the soccer field by late morning. Stark said landscape technicians are looking for issues with any other trees to maintain a safe tree campus.

As far as Sunspot at Yap-Keehn-Um Beach, some students were disappointed when the final day of rentals for the year ended with a safety closure.

“I’m so sad that NIC’s beach rentals are already closed for the season,” said Christi Haynos, 21, an NIC student majoring in music who was planning to take advantage of the rentals on Monday. “Summer flew by so fast but I’m happy to have gotten to go out the times I did.”

Early Monday morning, Terry Brinton, assistant coordinator for Outdoor Pursuits (OP), learned a sailboat belonging to a customer who rents a space on the beach had blown off the beach and was capsized about a quarter-mile off.

 “We had to coordinate with the sheriffs to try and get that thing rescued and pulled back,” Brinton said.

Brinton said that the wind was blowing from the north which is unusual at that strength. Normally, he said the wind comes from the southeast.

Sunspot at Yap-Keehn-Um Beach is closed until summer. While a boat in a rental spot was capsized, NIC boats sustained no damage.

“When we got here the wind was blowing probably 50 knots on the water, which is near hurricane-force winds,” said Brinton. “It was just huge rollers coming out of the river, and way too dangerous to go out on the water for sure.”

Brinton said that Sunspot at Yap-Keehn-Um Beach will close when weather conditions are unsafe or the weather is so harsh they won’t have many customers.

“If we send people out, we know that they may have to fight to get out but the wind will always blow them back to our beach,” Brinton said. “When it’s blowing 50 knots from the north, anybody that takes anything out in the water could wind up in Harrison and not be able to get back.”

No damage was done to any OP equipment. While Sunspot at Yap-Keehn-Um Beach is closed until next summer, OP will still rent out equipment by appointment as available.