CSUN Crews Rush to Reopening : Education: With workers toiling in rain and around the clock, President Blenda J. Wilson says the campus will meet Monday deadline for start of classes.

Struggling with the wreckage of what Cal State Northridge officials say has become the worst disaster ever to strike a major U.S. university, hundreds of workers labored around the clock in the rain Monday to ready the campus for its scheduled reopening next week.

Working in a rented recreational vehicle that has become her office since the Jan. 17 Northridge quake damaged virtually every building on the 353-acre campus, CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson predicted that the university will meet its Monday reopening deadline, but only by utilizing a still-developing patchwork of about 250 modular classrooms and holding many classes at off-campus sites.

“No university in the United States has ever suffered the degree of disaster we have experienced,” Wilson said Monday. “There has been no other incident that anyone knows about in which the entire campus of a university has been affected by a disaster.”

Wilson said the CSUN damage will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, making it “surely the costliest disaster to a major public higher educational institution in the country.” She said the loss will far exceed the largest prior amount she could determine, an estimated $11 million damage to the University of Miami from Hurricane Andrew.

She urged students and faculty members to be patient with the difficult recovery.

Through the week, a crew of about 300 people will be working 24 hours a day to set up the modular classrooms that Wilson said will probably become the university’s primary shelters for the coming semester. But progress was slowed by the storm’s winds and rain, and only about 70 of the 250 units were erected as of Monday.

There is no official estimate of the damage yet, but unofficial estimates by CSUN administrators have ranged as high as $350 million. However, CSUN Associate Vice President for Facilities Bill Chatham said engineers estimate that all of the campus’ damaged structures--potentially even parts of the 2,500-space parking structure that collapsed--can be repaired. But the work could take years, he said.

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University officials said the 250 modular classrooms and about 30 other portable buildings are being towed in from throughout California under the direction oA. Jones Construction of Los Angeles, the main contractor for the project. The month-to-month rentals alone are expected to cost the university about $5.5 million during the coming six months.

The university’s most prominent building, the Oviatt Library, is not expected to open until mid-March because of damage and because the quake dumped an estimated 600,000 volumes, about half of its collection, onto the floors. Starting next week, the campus plans to run seven-days-a-week shuttles to take CSUN students to libraries at UCLA.

University officials applauded news that preliminary enrollment figures for the spring semester show nearly 23,000 students--only about 2,000 fewer than a typical spring semester. But students will be able to drop and add classes for another several weeks, and CSUN officials are not sure how many of those registered will actually attend.

Although most of the classes that had been scheduled before the earthquake still will be offered, said university Provost Louanne Kennedy, the extensive damage to university buildings has forced a drastic reshuffling of the campus’s class schedule that will spread out more classes into early morning hours and nights--from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.--and even Saturdays.

Almost all lecture classes will be held in modular buildings on campus. But most specialized and laboratory classes are being sent elsewhere, including Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks; Mission, Pierce and Valley community colleges in the San Fernando Valley; UCLA; Glendale Community College, and even a Department of Water and Power building in San Fernando.

One of the heaviest hit divisions was the School of Science and Mathematics, which is based in a four-building complex that not only was structurally damaged in the quake but also suffered chemical contamination. Dean Donald Bianchi said one of the buildings may be available in several months, but the other three probably will be out for the entire semester.

Because the contractors have only begun to erect the modular buildings, administrators are unable to provide students with the exact locations where their classes will be held. They hope to do so through a newspaper supplement planned for this weekend and by having guides and distributing the supplements Monday.

Class information isn’t the only item on campus that’s hard to come by. CSUN’s main source of on-campus student housing, University Park Apartments, is not due to begin reopening until this Thursday, and then students will be allowed to move in only in small numbers at first, university officials said.

The university’s Matador Bookstore did open for the first time since the quake Monday, but drew only small numbers of students on a rainy morning compared to the crowds and long lines that typically form just a week before the start of classes. But for the few students who braved the rain and increasingly muddy campus, the ease of buying books was a pleasant change.

“It’s the first time we didn’t have to fight to get our books,” said Helene McNeil, 30, a senior political science major from West Hills. She and friend Lisa Vaccaro, 31, a senior health education major from Van Nuys, arrived an hour before the 8 a.m. opening hoping to beat the crowd that never came.

“I expected a line, but it’s like a ghost town,” Vaccaro said.

Not so pleasant for students has been the earthquake-induced freeze on financial aid payments, the pair said. It is probable that no payments will be made until next Tuesday because the earthquake knocked out a computer system, and about $8 million in loan checks for students were recovered from the damaged administration building only last Friday, officials said.

Because of the financial crunch, the university is offering students up to $500 in emergency loans using $250,000 in funds from the Cal State system and allowing students to begin attending classes before making all their payments, officials said. But students said those arrangements do little to cover rent payments and other obligations.