Faculty copes after Logan flood

Faculty members in the Psychology Department housed in Logan Hall have started the semester with a shortage of offices, labs, computers and furniture, in the aftermath of the Aug. 8 flood that left 35 rooms unusable.

Trish Aragon-Mascarenas, a Psychology Department administrator, said other faculty members have offered space to those who lost offices while construction is ongoing.

“It’s definitely been really difficult starting the semester while trying to accommodate all the faculty whose offices were affected,” she said. “Most of the faculty without an office are using their lab space as an office, but some who lost both their office space and their lab space are sharing an office space with other faculty members.”

The good news is that the faculty offices are scheduled to be completed by the end of this week, Aragon-Mascarenas said, and the basement and second floor are expected to be finished by end of this month.

Tom Ruiz, office manager for Nova Construction Inc., said major repairs have already been completed and workers are finishing cosmetic upkeep.

“The asbestos was taken care of, and we’ve already done the drywall, ceiling tiles and lights,” he said. “All we have left to do is some painting and work on the flooring. We should be 95 percent done by the end of the week, and the last bit of painting should be done in about two weeks.”

Aragon-Mascarenas said faculty members don’t know when offices will be fully refurnished.

“The insurance claim is going to take anywhere from four to six weeks to go through, so at this point we’re being told that the Department is going to have to purchase everything ourselves, out of our operating money, and then be reimbursed,” she said.
Mike Tuttle, UNM’s Safety and Risk Services manager, said the insurance claim process could take as long as two months.

“It’s a very long, complicated process,” he said. “UNM is insured by the state up to $500,000, and anything beyond that goes to various private carriers. Right now, we have an insurance adjuster working with the Psychology Department and the contractors doing the repairs to account for the damage, and nothing is really going to happen until we get the total amount agreed upon with the adjuster.”
Tuttle said damage costs are confidential and the state will not release the numbers.

“All I can say is that it was a very expensive clean-up process, and it is going to cost a substantial amount of money,” he said.
But Aragon-Mascarenas said the Psychology Department is not worried about the cost.
“It’s not really the money so much for us, but that it’s been a total inconvenience,” she said. “Figuring all this out has been more work added to the duties that we already have.”

Aragon-Mascarenas said faculty members are more concerned about the loss of computers and research that is on those computers.
“We really don’t know how much information we lost,” she said. “The clean-up crew took everything away so quickly. We didn’t really have a chance to figure things out. We just hope the problem is fixed and we don’t have to deal with something like this again.”