Rice campus escapes Rita unscathed

Rice campus escapes Rita unscathed

BY ARIE WILSON
Rice News staff

With planning, execution, communication and luck, Rice University escaped the threat of Hurricane Rita with no harm to people and virtually no damage from the storm.

More than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff took shelter on the Rice campus during the storm, which came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane. When the all-clear was sounded Saturday midday, the only Emergency Medical Services (EMS) calls had been for an allergic reaction to a bee sting and a woman on the verge of giving birth.

President David Leebron expressed thanks to the Rice community for making the experience as comfortable as possible. “I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped prepare this campus to assure the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” President Leebron said. “There are many who deserve a great deal of praise, but worthy of special mention are the housing and dining staff, the facilities and engineering staff, the college masters, student EMS workers, the Rice University police and the IT staff. Once more we experienced what an extraordinary community we have here at Rice.”

The Rice Crisis Management Team triggered emergency plans Monday, Sept. 19, even before the hurricane’s exact course was known. Hundreds of Rice staff went to work confirming and preparing the safest places for shelter, preparing to feed students remaining on campus, ensuring storm drains and pumps were in perfect order, checking emergency power and water and generally battening down the campus.

As the hurricane approached Friday, undergraduate students who had not chosen to evacuate from Houston reported to their respective colleges, and volunteer housing, dining and custodial staff members stayed on to ensure students’ comfort. Robert and Janice McNair Hall was opened at 8 a.m. Sept. 23 for residents of the Graduate Student Apartments and graduate and postdoctoral students and their families who live off campus. With Senior Project Manager Pat Dwyer stepping in to coordinate, they were assigned shelter in McNair Hall, Rice Memorial Center or Fondren Library.

“This was a little bit of an unusual situation since it was our first time to shelter graduate students on campus,” said Barbara White Bryson, associate vice president of Facilities, Engineering and Planning (FE&P), who added that the professionalism of the Rice staff was a key factor in the success of this operation.

“So many people came through so terrifically — Russell Price and his amazing team of facilities people, Mark Ditman and the housing and dining staff, RUPD, the college masters and many others. I am very proud of our staff and all the others on campus.”

On other parts of the campus, Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman and college masters were preparing the residential colleges for the storm. Masters met to plan for students’ safety and comfort and were equipped with walkie-talkies to remain in touch with the command center the university’s Crisis Management Team set up in the Founders Room of Lovett Hall and with one another.

At Will Rice College, an emergency committee and plan were formed and implemented to deal with sheltering the students. Team leaders were assigned to each floor, a master list of students was created and a check-in process was implemented. Student work crews were organized to remove debris from the areas surrounding the college that might become dangerous projectiles in the wind.

“We purchased additional walkie talkies, first-aid supplies, etc., and then moved ice, water and food into the building,” said Joel Wolfe, Will Rice College master. “The planning was pretty intensive, but we had several days to get it done.”

Meanwhile, Hanszen College masters Wesley and Barbara Morris prepared for a much stronger storm than they eventually experienced. FE&P had obtained from Rice contractors sufficient plywood to cover windows in key shelter spots and distributed more to colleges for supplemental use. Hanszen students pitched in to search the campus for spare pieces of wood. Another delegation traveled to a retail store to stock up on board games that would be used to pass the time.

In addition to the approximately 125 college members, Hanszen Commons became a shelter for a few of the students’ families.

“We had two parents who were stuck here and stayed with us,” Morris said. “One parent came to see the Dalai Lama, which was canceled, and the other one’s [child] had evacuated to Dallas before they arrived for Families Weekend, which was also canceled.”

Assistant to the President Mark Scheid helped coordinate the Rita operation, responding to hundreds of telephone calls an e-mails. He said electrical power, water and Internet and phone systems remained working on campus throughout the strongest gusts of the storm, and the mood of the campus remained positive and pleasant. City power was lost on the edges of the campus — for example, in the Graduate Student Apartments, Greenbriar Building and Wiess President’s House — for varying periods of time. Facilities and grounds crews, Rice police officers and members of the student-run Rice EMS worked round-the-clock shifts, ensuring campus safety throughout the storm.

However, with winds topping out at 95-miles-per-hour gusts and barely more than one inch of rain falling, perhaps one of the most exciting moments on campus involved a woman who was nine-months pregnant.

“She was one day from delivery and had extended members of her family with her on campus, so she didn’t want to leave,” Scheid said.

Eventually, a Rice EMS staff member, Rachana Patel, convinced the student to go to the Texas Medical Center, where she could be monitored by a physician. The university has not yet received word on whether she has given birth.

Robert Yekovich, dean of the Shepherd School of Music and the Elma Schneider Professor of Music, rode out the worst of the storm in Alice Pratt Brown Hall, where he, his wife, two other faculty members and their families successfully watched over more than 100 pianos, an assortment of harps, numerous string instruments and valuable period pieces.

“We did it partially because we live in houses that are full of windows and partially to have someone on campus to manage our expensive instruments if the windows had blown out,” Yekovich said.

“My wife and I had sleeping bags and we took double bass cases, which are padded, and slept on them,” Yekovich said. “It was surprisingly comfortable. I had never slept on a bass case before.”

Information Technology personnel worked hard to keep systems up, and the Web proved to be a powerful information source.

The Division of Public Affairs activated and operated an emergency Web site, <http://www.rice.edu/emergency>, and made regular — at the peak, hourly — updates to keep parents, faculty and staff informed. President Leebron provided a regularly updated personal message drawing on his observations and his interactions with those on campus during the emergency. Factual reports gave the storm’s progress, information on Rice preparations, instructions to students, faculty and staff, and expert advice from Philip Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering, on what to expect.

Even before the storm had passed, Web site readers from around the country and even overseas were sending messages of appreciation.

“Thank you for the outstanding communication regarding, and preparation for, the hurricane,” read one. “Up here in Minnesota, people are surprised we have not evacuated our son, a sophomore at Rice, until we refer them to your Web site. Far better that he be with you than on the road out of town. Your obvious competence and consideration are deeply appreciated.”