There has been a massive cleanup effort at the Australian National University where more than one third of buildings on campus were affected by Monday's hailstorm.
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Hailstones pummeled more than 80 buildings on campus, along with cars and trees.
The campus was largely closed for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as parks and ground teams toiled away on clearing the mess left by the intense storm.
"The storm cut its way through the campus from west to east and the main damage was skylights, windows, glasshouses and plant equipment," ANU chief operating officer Paul Duldig said.
"Trees have been stripped and people's cars and university vehicles have been destroyed by hailstones."
Mr Duldig said there were people injured on campus and one had been required to go to hospital.
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Older buildings had been more affected by hail damage, including the 1954-built heritage University House - the first building at ANU. It had been badly impacted, Mr Duldig said.
"Its one of the original buildings on campus so it has heritage overlays," he said.
"Our repairs need to be sensitive and because of the building standards at the time [it] didn't withstand the hail like the more modern buildings have."
The ANU School of Art and Design was another heritage building battered and Mr Duldig said it would also take some time to fix.
Some student rooms had been "minimally impacted", Mr Duldig said but as far as he was aware those with damage were not occupied.
Like CSIRO, glasshouses at the ANU's Research School of Biology also suffered major damage.
There are about 200 buildings at the Acton campus.
Orientation week begins on February 17 and Mr Duldig was confident the campus would be fully operational before then.
On Wednesday, cafes and stories in the Kambri Precinct were opened.
It is the second time in a month the university has been forced closed after a weather event. In early-January, Canberra's poor air quality from smoke haze shut the campus for almost a week.
"Our staff and students are feeling it a bit with the impact of the smoke and we've also been dealing with the impact of the fire threat to some of our rural campuses," Mr Duldig said.
Mr Duldig said although ANU had been impacted by weather in the past, he was not aware of a time it had affected the whole campus.
"We've not really been faced with a campus wide impact in people's memory, certainly not two in one month." he said.
More than 100 buildings will open on Thursday.
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Lucy Bladen
Lucy Bladen has been a journalist at The Canberra Times since 2019. She is an ACT politics and health reporter. Email: l.bladen@canberratimes.com.au
Lucy Bladen has been a journalist at The Canberra Times since 2019. She is an ACT politics and health reporter. Email: l.bladen@canberratimes.com.au
