CSUN’s Loss Tops College Disasters List

In the long roll of disasters to American universities, last month’s earthquake damage to Cal State Northridge appears to lead the list.

Although, if there were any Civil War era cadets of the Virginia Military Institute still around, they might debate the issue.

There have been many college catastrophes. Floods in 1904 put Michigan State University in East Lansing under water. Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., was damaged by a tornado in 1966, and Gulf Park College for Girls in southern Mississippi was inundated by Hurricane Camille in 1969.

A 7.7 temblor rocked the Charleston, S.C., area in 1886. Buildings collapsed throughout the area, but The Citadel military college was virtually unscathed.

The apparent runner-up to CSUN’s quake damage is the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami, where in 1992 Hurricane Andrew caused $12.5 million in destruction. But repairs at CSUN are expected to total 20 times as much, or more.

If man-made disasters were included, however, VMI may have suffered the most. In June, 1864, the institute’s 270 cadets played a key role in the Confederate victory at the battle of nearby New Market, plugging a hole in the southern line and mounting a charge that routed the Yankees. A few weeks later, with the South reeling toward defeat, a regrouped Union army targeted VMI, where dorms, classrooms and the library were all located in one huge, four-story building. The building was burned to the ground. It took the school a year to reopen.