IOWA CITY - Out of the 20 University of Iowa buildings damaged in the flood, the Iowa Advanced Technical Lab sustained the most damage to what was inside the building. A large amount of research went on in the building. Some of it so technical and precise, the slightest alteration could mess it up. Then two-feet of water came rushing into the labs.

The filing cabinets and shelves sitting outside the Iowa Advanced Tech Lab are the least of the concerns for the university. Inside, students and scientists conducted physics, chemistry and engineering research. The first floor of the IATL will not be ready for the fall semester. But it could have been worse. Vice Provost Tom Rocklin said, “If people had cell cultures they're growing for instance, that they had to monitor every day, we'd be in big trouble."

Plus, thousands of volunteers built massive sandbag walls around campus buildings. The bags did not keep the water out, but they did keep the force of rushing water to the riverbed. Design and Construction Director Rod Lehnertz said, "These walls allowed the buildings to sit in a pond instead of on the current of the river."

Of course, IATL still suffered significant damage. Much of that comes to the damage to the clean rooms, where you had to be protected before entering, just to protect the equipment. Lehnertz said, "And then you had two feet of sludge and water in the rooms. A fairly drastic difference from one day to the next in this building."

And it means a fairly drastic price tag to fix it. The damage to this building alone tops $40-million. $34-million is for the content inside and $8-million to the building itself.

Email Steve Nicoles at Steve.Nicoles@kcrg.com