The University of Colorado-Boulder reopened Monday after the flooding that deluged the city didn't spare the campus.
Colleges elsewhere were preoccupied with football games this past weekend, but CU Boulder was not one of them. The game was canceled as authorities focused on the damage wrought by rising waters. Around 80 buildings on campus were damaged in some form, CU Boulder police tweeted, and raw sewage was flowing from a pipe in one area.
The city of Boulder, which lies about 25 miles northwest of Denver, has faced record flooding. At least 1,750 people had been evacuated as of Saturday night.
Some people attempted to take advantage of the disaster on campus:
The university announced the decision to reopen Monday even as other local schools planned to remain closed. The move was unpopular among some students, who considered it unsafe and gathered more than 3,600 signatures on an online petition calling on CU to backtrack. The university, which has more than 30,000 graduate and undergraduate students, asked faculty members to be flexible in working with those affected by the flood.
Meanwhile, students took to social media to show what it looks like when a major college campus floods:
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If there's any good news for CU-Boulder, it's that the flood has not claimed the lives of any students, and a 9/11 flag memorial survived the rising waters.
Without a game to play, CU Boulder's football players went to the stadium to serve lunch to first responders and to residents of university family housing who had been evacuated.
CU police officer Matthew DeLaria told the Boulder-based Daily Camera that the meal was "a really nice break."
"It's been hard. It's been exhausting," DeLaria said. "All the police, fire and ambulance crews are just running and running and running. We're all working 12-hour shifts at least. So we're tired but we're hanging in there. We've got a lot of support from the community. So it's been good."
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