The whirling winds and soaking rains of Hurricane Katrina left the Ole Miss campus debris-ridden on Tuesday morning though damages weren”t as disastrous as some had predicted.

“The events on campus were minor,” said Buddy Kahler, associate director of the Ole Miss physical plant, who braved Monday night’s storm with other plant workers to survey the damage on campus.

When the storm system arrived, it had been downgraded to tropical storm level, lessening its severity. According to the National Weather Service, Oxford received 4.03 inches of rain. The nearby city of Tupelo recorded wind gusts of 53 mph.

Kahler said the only major campus damage was a blown-out window in the northeast corner of the Student Union, next to the entrance to the post office.

“The window is boarded up now,” he said. “Other than that, there was just a lot of little stuff around campus.”

Kahler and his crews saw spaces on buildings” roofs where tiles had blown away, power outages in many areas of campus and leaks to damaged faculty housing. Fire alarm systems in certain parts of campus went off accidentally because of leakage as well, he said.