The Rice Thresher, Vol. 93, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 22, 2005 Page: 1 of 2
two pages : ill. ; page 19 x 15 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
1
the Rice
resher
Vol. XC1II, Issue No. 6 — EXTRA (5 a.m.)
SINCE 1916
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Remaining students brace for Hurricane Rita
by David Brown and Risa Gordon
THW--SHICK I-IIITOKIAI. STAIT
Students weighed whether to stay at Rice
or leave campus Wednesday as Hurricane Rita
grew from a tropical storm to the third most
powerful hurricane ever recorded. Rice admin-
istrators prepared provisions for students who
will remain in their residential colleges.
Rice administrators have not given a blanket
recommendation on whether or not students
should evacuate. Assistant to the Resident Mark
Scheid (Baker '67), who is the director of the Crisis
ManagementTeam, said Wee is well prepared to
shelter students who remain on campus.
Scheid said food rations are in place, build-
ings are safe, and an on-campus generator
and freshwater well will serve campus if area
utilities fail.
However, Scheid said students who wish to
evacuate Thursday still have time to do so.
Students have been instructed to tell their
college masters whether they are staying or
evacuating, and off-campus students remaining
in Houston have been advised to return to their
residential colleges.
Rice also has a Web page with emergency
information: http://www.rice.edu/emergency.
Hiifrfcane Rita reached Category 5 Wednes-
day evening. Winds in'the 370-mile-wide sUmn
in the Gulf of Mexico have reached 175,miles,
per rlour. National Weather Service reports,pre-;
dieted the hurricane would hit the Texas Gull'
Coast late Friday night or early Saturday.
At a forum Wednesday afternoon, Civil and
Environmental Engineering professor Philip
Bedient, an expert in Hood prediction, said Rice
is an optimal place to take shelter.
"If 1 had a choice, 1 would stay right here
on the Rice campus," he said
\\ litre to
Given heavy traffic and students' differing
options of places to go, decisions on whether
to evacuate or not should be made individu-
ally, Scheid said.
Scheid said Wednesday that Rice does not plan
to move students out of any of the colleges,
" The colleges are pretty much equally safe
because they were all built to last 100 years,
and [to sustain] 100 mile per hour winds,"
Scheid said.
However, Scheid said some places in the
colleges are safer than others. Today, Housing
Operations Manager Chris Rydzeski and an
architect will meet with each college master to
determine the best places in each college for
students to take shelter, Housing and Dining
Director Mark DiUnan said. Masters' estimates
of how many people are staying in the colleges
will help determine these arrangements.
For example, Scheid said, students in
south-facing rooms may be asked to move
into a hallway or a north-facing room during
the storm.
Some buildings on campus will be closed
if deemed unsafe, or if they are not needed in
order to conserve electricity, Scheid said.
Brown College Master John Hutchinson is
a member of the Crisis ManagementTeam and
is responsible for communicating between the
team and the other college masters.
Hutchinson said off-campus students should
consider coming to Rice.
"If [students] are off-campus, they need to
really seriously assess the safety of their loca-
tion," lie said. "They will be safer and will have
access to more resources if they are on-campus
where we can communicate with them."
But Hutchinson said students with perma-
nent residences in 1 louston should think about
staying at home instead.
'That would allow us to concentrate our
resources and spaces on students who don't
have other opportunities," Hutchinson said,
t "But all students who choose to remain on
campus will be provided with space, shelter,
food and water — regardless of whether they
are from Houston."
Hutchinson said off-campus students who
choose to come on campus for the storm will
be notified of a time on Friday by which they
need to arrive.
Hutchinson said an immediate goal of
students on campus should be to ensure the
saiety ol their personal belongings.
"Make the assumption that your windows
will not stay fast against water and that you're
likely to have water breaches in your room,
and prepare accordingly," he said.
Hutchinson suggested putting valuable
items in closets, moving computers away from
.windows and covering items in plastic.
Scheid said all parking gates will be raised,
and students may park their cars anywhere on
campus. He said the North Colleges Lot has
tbe highest elevation of any of the lots, while
theTowU Lot and the Central Campus Garage
CANCELLATIONS AND POSTPONEMENTS
The following events were cancelled or postponed as a result of Hurricane Rita.
Event Original time
Speeches
The Dalai Lama: "The meaning of compassion in everyday life" 10 a.m. Thursday
Cancelled
The Dalai Lama: "Tolerance and universal responsibility" 2 p.m. Thursday
Cancelled
Events
Families' Weekend Friday-Sunday
Cancelled
Rice night at the Houston Zoo Thursday 4 p.m.
Postponed indefinitely
Athletics
Football: Navy at Rice 7 p.m. Saturday
Rescheduled for Oct. 22
Men's tennis: Texas Invitational Friday-Sunday
Rescheduled for Oct. 28-30
Powderpuff football Saturday-Sunday
Postponed indefinitely
Soccer: TCU at Rice 7 p.m. Friday
To be announced
Soccer: Rice at Idaho State 1 p.m. Sunday
To be announced
Volleyball: Rice at Houston 7 p.m. Sept. 21
To be announced
Volleyball: Alabama-Birmingham at Rice 7 p.m. Friday
To be announced
Volleyball: Rice at Memphis 1 p.m. Sunday
To be announced
Women's cross country: Roy Griak Invitational Saturday
Rice will not attend
Women's tennis: Rice Classic Friday-Sunday
Cancelled
Plays
The Rice Players: "Aunt Dan and Lemon" Friday-Sunday
Rescheduled for Oct. 13-15
Wiess College one-acts Friday-Sunday
Postponed indefinitely
are susceptible to flooding. Scheid said students
can also seek parking in covered garages in the
Texas Medical Center.
Graduate students and postdoctoral re-
searchers needing shelter will be directed
primarily to McNair Hall, Ditman said. Food
has been stockpiled in the Student Center for
these people, he said.
What is provided
Scheid said Rice has a freshwater well that
can supply the campus with water and which
does not need electricity. He said H&D also has
a three-day supply of bottled water.
Ditman said food should not be a concern
ior students and that the advice on Rice's emer-
gency Web site to stockpile a three-day supply
of food applies primarily to off-campus students
who choose to remain off campus.
"With the population that we think we're
going to have, we're in good shape food-wise,"
Ditman said.
Perishable food should last through Friday,
and H&D has enough canned food for Satur-
day and Sunday, when utilities may be down,
Ditman said.
Ditman said he is less worried about food
and space constraints than about students'
judgment.
"My primary concern is that people might
go outside and entertain themselves during
the storm," Ditman said. "It's really more the
personal safety of people [that concerns me]
than being able to feed people or give them
space to sleep."
If service from Rice's electricity provid-
ers, Reliant Energy and CenterPoint Energy,
is interrupted, on-campus generators have
the capacity to power half the campus using
natural gas, Scheid said. Since the natural gas
pipelines are underground, Scheid said he does
not expect a major interruption in the power
supply on campus.
If the natural gas supply is disrupted, the
campus generators have enough friel for at
least one day.
Alter the storm, nearby areas may not
have electricity while Rice does, but the crisis
management team decided not to take in any
non-Rice people seeking refuge from the heat
and humidity, Scheid said.
"We cannot become a shelter to an unknown
number of people," he said. "We talked about it,
but nobody thought it was a good idea."
How to communicate
College-and university-wide communication
will mainly be carried out via college listservs
and the university's emergency Web site. Scheid
said the Crisis ManagementTeam decided to
maintain e-mail accounts despite the possibility
servers will get wet and be ruined. Hutchinson
said e-mail should be maintained until just
before the storm.
Some students reported Wednesday they
were not receiving e-mails until several hours
after they were sent. The delay in receiving
e-mail could be the result of increased e-mail
volume, Director of Networking, Telecommu-
nications and Operations William Deigaard
(Wiess '92) said.
"It could very well be a backlog," Deigaard
said." It could be that a lot more people are send-
ing e-mail to see what's going on. I'm not getting
a lot of e-mail myself, and I've just attributed it
to a lot of people trying to communicate."
Hutchinson said students should not rely
solely on e-mail and should check the Rice
emergency Web site frequently. He said the
Crisis ManagementTeam will post vital infor-
mation on the Web site in addition to sending
it via e-mail.
Scheid said he and others in the crisis
management center, likely to be located at
the Founder's Room in l^ovett Hall, can also
reach students through instant campus-wide
voicemail messages. President David Leebron
and Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman are
also on the Crisis Management Team.
Should electricity be unavailable, Scheid said
the crisis management center will use walkie-
talkies to communicate with masters, who w ill
| relay messages to with students.
"Each master will have one walkie-talkie, so
we can still contact masters with instructions
to move Hanszen into Wiess or something like
that," Scheid said. "Finally, there is a satellite
phone we can haul out to talk to the rest of
world if everything else fails."
Scheid said he expects cell phone coverage
to be better during Hurricane Rita than it was
during Tropical Storm Allison, which caused
extensive flooding in Houston in June 2001.
"DuringTropical Storm Allison, cell towers
were on top of buildings in the medical center,
powered by generators in basements [that
flooded]," Scheid said. "Now, those generators
have been moved to the roof."
Communicating with off-campus families
may be difficult, Hutchinson said.
"I think we should just assume that there will
be a blackout period," he said. "Power [may be]
down. Cell phone service may not work. We're
likely to lose land lines. ... Parents should be
aware of the emergency information page that will
be kept up-to-date even during the storm, so [if
they] are nervous about what's happening here,
[they] will have a source of information."
Who is responding
Rice Emergency Medical Services Captain
Aaron Heckelman said he and two other
EMTs — the normal shift size — will be on
duty during the hurricane.
Heckelman, a Lovett College senior, said
REMS is prepared to respond to emergencies,
but that students should not call REMS with
problems that are not urgent. Heckelman said
he will evaluate conditions when called, and that
REMS will respond to any emergency it can.
Scheid said all college masters and resident
associates will remain at their colleges.
Hutchinson said the masters' main job will be
communication, including advising students on
whether to remain on campus or evacuate.
Hutchinson said he will stay with Brown
students during the storm.
"My plan is to be wherever our students
are," he said. "I'll have a walkie-talkie to stay
in communication with the rest of the Crisis
ManagementTeam, and I'll have an AM/FM
radio there to listen to weather reports if they
come through."
After the storm, masters will helpeoordinate
food and water distribution, among other activi-
ties, Hutchinson said.
Rice Police Chief Bill Taylor said all RUPD
officers and security officers will be on campus
beginning Friday at noon. Officers normally-
work 8-hour shifts, but they may work for 12
hours at a time this weekend, Taylor said.
"We'll adjust the shifts as we need," he said.
"We'll have all the officers here, so we can use
them as things progress."
Taylor said RUPD has used extended shifts
in the past.
"We have experience with it, like when we did
a lockdown for the Super Bowl," Taylor said.
Diunan said more than a dozen H&D staff will
be housed nearby and will be on campus for the
next several days. Their role will primarily be as
organizers — students will be asked to help dis-
tribute food. DiUnan said. Additional staff support
would stretch food resources, he said.
"We want to have enough leadership in place
that we can keep the H&D pieces working,
but we're certainly going to ask [students] for
help," Ditman said. "Quite frankly, we don't
want any more people on campus to provide
for than absolutely essential."
Ditman said student volunteers will likely only
be asked to perform simple tasks like making
sandwiches and distributing water bottles.
Scheid, who was at Rice for Tropical Storm
Allison in 2001 as well as for Hurricane Alicia
in 1983, said he does not expect Hurricane Rita
to severely affect Rice.
'Traditionally, hurricanes at Rice are not
a big hiccup in the academic functioning of
the university," Scheid said. "So 1 don't think
there's going to be much impact here. Tradi-
tionally, the effect a hurricane has on campus
is — from the student's point of view — it's a
really cool event."
Amber ObermeyerandSathan Black contributed
to this report.
THRESHER SCHEDULE
With Hurricane Rita nearing the Gulf
Coast, no Thresher will be published
Friday. If classes resume by Tuesday,
a normal issue will be published next
week with full coverage of the
hurricane and its effects on Rice
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Obermeyer, Amber. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 93, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 22, 2005, newspaper, September 22, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443097/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.