Front view of library

Front view of library

Olympic College. Learning Resources Center--Roof Collapse

Olympic College. Library--History

Building failures

College libraries

Community Colleges--Washington (State)

Natural disasters--Washington (State)

Photo 1: Front view of library; Photo 2: Front view of library, looking East.

In December 1996 a heavy snow storm caused the roof of the Olympic College Learning Resources Center building to collapse. Much of the Reference collection was destroyed. What could be salvaged was done in one day. A crane was brought in to lift and remove sections of the roof resting on portions of the shelving and as each section was removed, staff was allowed in to box as many items as possible. Books and journals that had fallen onto the floor were already soaked and staff had to walk on them to get to the salvageable items still on shelves. Meanwhile, the basement accumulated 1-2 feet of melting snow and rain when the drains backed up yet staff went down to remove as much of the media equipment as possible. Most of the artwork hanging on the walls in the library was saved. The process of recovering contents and condemning the portion of the collapsed building occurred within one week. Working with architects and letting the bid out (twice) for the rebuilding, and doing the rebuilding took three and a half years

Olympic College Libraries

1997

Phillips, Gary

Imbiorski, Jerry

Olympic College Libraries. Rights Reserved.

Olympic College Library Roof Collapse

image/jpeg

Still Image

librc122; librc207

2013

Bremerton, Washington

1996-1997

Scanned from photographic print using Epson GT 20000 scanner at 24 bit color, 720 ppi for 4" x 6" and 3" x 5" prints, saved as uncompressed TIFF, approximate pixel dimensions 4600x3200. TIFF files compressed and resized in Adobe Photoshop to 150 ppi and 800x542 pixels, saved as JPEG format.

4 in x 6 in color photograph: Roof Collapse Photograph Collection, album labeled "LRC Roof Collapse Album 2". Collection consists of 3 photograph album binders and 356 individual color photographs most of which are 4 in x 6 in with a handful of 3 in x 5 in.