Beaumont Enterprise: Montagne Center among Lamar's damaged buildings

The Montagne Center and Cardinal Stadium are among the most seriously damaged buildings at Lamar University, thanks to Hurricane Ike, but it appears much of the rest of campus may have escaped the worst, President Jimmy Simmons said.

“We’re in the process of evaluating all that right now,” Simmons said. “Restoration and repair crews came in this morning. We’re going to assess the conditions and assess the situation as quickly as possible.”

Of all the buildings on campus, it appears the Montagne Center suffered the most crippling blow. Saturday afternoon, just hours after Ike made landfall, the 24-year-old building showed its scars: blown-out windows and massive holes in the southwest corner, through which the the ceiling and inside seats were visible; more damaged glass in the southeast corner; and dozens of white tiles ripped off the façade on the outside of the arena.

Cardinal Stadium had turned into a lake, with standing water on top of the playing field. Ironically, Higgins Field House -- scheduled for demolition -- appeared to have emerged from Ike unscathed.

From the outside, other buildings on campus, including the Gray Library, the Setzer Student Center and the Sheila Umphrey Recreational Center, looked like they survived with little or no outside damage.

Siding is missing in some areas of Cardinal Village, but the dormitories looked otherwise unharmed from the outside.

“A few academic buildings had some damage, but it doesn’t look like we had the same kind of damage we had from Hurricane Rita (in 2005),” Simmons said. “That’s probably because of the roof repairs we’d made (after Rita).”

Simmons said he doesn’t yet know when classes will resume. The university still has to inspect each of the 80-plus academic buildings and 1,000-plus dorms, one by one.

Then there’s the issue of bringing back faculty, staff and students.

“We think we’ll have a better idea tomorrow (Monday) of when we can start back up,” Simmons said.

The university will post updates on its Web site, www.lamar.edu.