This paper offers a fresh perspective on the COVID-19 situation of higher education institutions from a disaster-management perspective. Based on conceptual models of disaster management theory and with the help of a longitudinal multi-method, multi-perspective approach, this research contributes to better understanding the challenges during and "after" such a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic started with a single event (e.g. campuses are shut down because of a dangerous disease) and transformed into a situation where new events (like new virus mutants) deepened the crisis during the hypothetical restabilisation phases. This includes the switch from a very coherent problem perception of all institutional actors in the beginning, to different and conflicting viewpoints and preferences over time. The paper argues that these developments contribute to the already fragmented realities of higher education institutions, e.g. by never giving institutions the time to agree on how to deal with the abundance of options in the long run.