::Read the full story on the ASU Football Dome::
ASU’s Tempe campus spent Friday recovering from the previous night’s sever thunderstorm, which left downed trees, flooding and power outages in its wake.
“Most of it what we see is just minor wind damage,” said ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler. “There was little real damage to structures on either [the Downtown or Tempe] campus.”
Officials from the Polytechnic campus in east Mesa and the West campus in Phoenix said no damage had been reported there..
Keeler said the damage in downtown Phoenix and Tempe is still being assessed by the University’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety, which has not yet estimated the cost of the damage.
On the Tempe campus, a panel on top of the roof of the Packard Drive South Parking Structure was ripped off, damaging cars parked in nearby Lot 59.
At Downtown campus, the basement of the University Center, which houses the campus’s main library saw some minor flooding.
“There was water on the floor around 10 p.m.,” said Scott Muir, library administrator. “Most of it was confined to the staff area, not in any public areas.”
The most visible damage was to the roof of the football practice facility, which prompted the Tempe Police Department to shut down Rural Road from Rio Salado Parkway to Sixth Street on Thursday night.
Sgt. Scott Smith said the department had its hands full with emergency calls, which came in nonstop for a period of 58 minutes on Thursday.
“Most of them were storm-related hazards,” Smith said. Live power lines along the road and streets blocked by downed trees were most common calls, he said.
The storm also left as many as 80,000 APS customers without power. APS officials said 20,000 people, mostly concentrated in central Phoenix and Tempe, were still without power early Friday afternoon.
APS spokesperson Damon Gross said the blackouts could extend into Saturday morning for some, but the utility was doing everything it could to restore power to all of its customers.
“That number [of outages] has gone down throughout the day and will continue to go down,” Gross said. “We’ve got more than 60 locations where we’ve got poles down and equipment damaged, just to give you an idea of the work we have to do.”
SRP reported similar numbers — 40,000 customers without power at the peak of the storm and about 1,000 still experiencing the effects Friday afternoon, spokesperson Scott Harelson said.
Flooding to the Vista Del Sol apartment complex did not cause any serious damage and has all been taken care of, spokesperson Denise Giambelluca said.
