BAY AREA QUAKE : Campuses Get Back on Track : Earthquake: Some school officials are still assessing the damage and others are astounded at their good fortune, but the lack of serious injuries on campus is a relief to all.

Eighty-three years ago, Stanford University President David Starr Jordan wrote that his earthquake-battered university “is clearing away the fallen stones and restoring the torn walls, and her classrooms will be open . . . as though nothing had happened.”

On Tuesday, much as Jordan vowed in New San Francisco magazine to replace the 15-year-old campus ravaged by the 1906 quake, Stanford officials counted their blessings and got the university fully back to work after suffering $160 million damage in last week’s temblor.

During a campus news conference, President Donald Kennedy said 25 of about 400 buildings on the sprawling campus had to be closed entirely or placed under limited access. But there were no deaths or serious injuries, and classes began resuming last Thursday, just two days after the quake struck on Oct. 17.

“That was not an easy decision to make,” Kennedy told the university’s 13,000 students during a campus radio broadcast the night before the reopening. “But the Stanford way is to go for it if you can.”

As Stanford announced all classes and research projects were back on track, most of the scores of other colleges and universities in the Bay Area reported operations were normal--or nearly so--one week to the day after the 7.1 quake struck from beneath the mountains near Santa Cruz.

While townspeople in hard-hit Santa Cruz and Watsonville tried to cope with the damage to residential neighborhoods and the historic downtowns, the wooded campus of UC Santa Cruz bore few scars. Only a science building suffered serious structural damage, and two libraries and the women’s center remained closed after classes resumed on Monday.

“To a great extent, things are as back to normal as they can be,” university spokesman Jim Burns said.

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Robert Stevens said a preliminary survey put the damage at $12 million, with another $6 million required to further improve seismic safety and communications. The university was completely cut off for several hours after the quake, he noted.

Despite its proximity to the quake’s epicenter, San Jose State University suffered no major structural damage to its main campus. After working through the weekend to pick up thousands of books that had tumbled from shelves, officials reopened campus libraries on Tuesday.

All classrooms are usable. Nonetheless, there was about $1.7 million in damage, a university spokesman said Tuesday.

In the East Bay, UC Berkeley had little damage or disruption. A few miles away, in the Oakland hills, administrators of the venerable Mills College spent Tuesday moving their offices out of an 1871 building “as a precaution.”

Across the bay, officials of San Francisco State University scrambled to find other quarters for the 700 students displaced by water line problems in one of its dorms, Verducci Hall. The dorm is not expected to reopen until after Thanksgiving weekend, university spokeswoman Janet Kraut said.

While classes resumed Monday, the library will remain closed for a while. “Please do not return currently due library books until Nov. 1,” said a memo distributed to students this week. Officials were trying to line up borrowing privileges at neighboring universities and set up other study centers.

While just three minor injuries occurred on campus, Kraut said there has been “a lot of counseling” for those traumatized by the temblor.

At the private University of San Francisco, officials were marveling at their good luck. “We had a couple of cracked stairways and we lost a couple of dorm windows, and we’re checking for damage to the ornate interior of St. Ignatius (the campus church), but we have our own co-generator, so we even had heat and power on Tuesday night,” a spokesman said.

UC San Francisco endured just “superficial” damage, according to UC spokesman Rick Malaspina. Total damage at the three UC campuses affected by the quake--Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Cruz--was estimated to be $30 to $40 million, about half of that at Santa Cruz, Malaspina said. The UC system, which is self-insured for such disasters, will also apply for federal and state disaster relief funds to cover the cost of repairs, he said.

Federal and state aid will also be requested by the State University and College system, which estimates a total of $45 million in damage to San Francisco, San Jose and Hayward campuses and by the California Community Colleges system, which has not yet compiled estimates from all 26 of the campuses affected.

Ann Reed, vice chancellor for public affairs for the community colleges, said most of the affected schools were reopened within 24 hours of the quake. Only two remain closed, City College of San Francisco and Cabrillo College in Aptos, and they intend to reopen by the end of this week, she added.

“We were surprised and astounded that we sustained no catastrophic damage at any of the colleges,” Reed said. “While perhaps the damage was substantial in terms of dollars, it was not life-threatening. We had no serious injuries.

“That put it all into wonderful perspective for us.”

Similar sentiments were echoed Tuesday by Stanford’s Kennedy, who noted the lack of serious injuries meant “a lot of people were put through worrying when they didn’t need to be.”

But he acknowledged that the cost in damaged buildings was staggering, saying it is too soon to determine how the university will pay to rebuild or replace them. The university does not have earthquake insurance, he added.

Among those heavily damaged are Memorial Church--the crown jewel of the campus, also destroyed in the 1906 quake, the Stanford Museum, the Graduate School of Business building, the main library’s west wing and rotunda and a vacant chemistry building that had been condemned three years ago. It has not yet been determined what can be saved, Kennedy said.

Soble reported from Menlo Park and Merl from Los Angeles