Rice reopens after Harvey

Campus damage minor, so community reaches out to help those swamped by epic storm

Hurricane Harvey’s winds spared Rice University, but the campus took on record rains when the storm hit on the evening of Aug. 26 and continued for four days.

The good news is that damages to campus buildings were relatively minor and manageable, even despite two tornado warnings, compared to those caused by widespread flooding in east Texas. The bad news is that members of the Rice community are among tens of thousands of people forced from their homes. The university is mobilizing to help as many of them as possible.

Students, staff and faculty are also reaching out to multiple community service projects to offer their aid to Rice’s home city.

Rising water from Hurricane Harvey made Entrance 17 at Stockton and University impassable though much of the storm. Courtesy of RUPD

“The outpouring of volunteer assistance to those in need has been inspiring, not only at Rice but across our city,” President David Leebron wrote in a letter to the community. “I want to thank every student, staff and faculty member who has taken time to volunteer. This is indeed OUR city. We’re proud to be here, and your efforts are demonstrating a show of resilience and generosity that will astonish the world.”

The campus remained closed through Labor Day, Sept. 4, as Facilities Engineering and Planning crews inspected every room of every building, looking for storm damage and making repairs as quickly as possible.

During Harvey’s siege, students remained under the protection of several hundred university staff who rode out the storm on campus, keeping drains clear, buildings buttoned and everyone fed.

Assistant Vice President for Facilities Bart Salmon led FE&P efforts to repair leaks and clear several trees that fell during the storm, and was later joined by Associate Vice President Kathy Jones and Kathryn Cavender, director of environmental health and safety, who were out of town when Harvey hit. Meanwhile, a crew from the Office of Information Technology kept watch throughout Harvey at the Main Street facilities that house the data center and Fondren Library annex, and Public Affairs posted updates on emergency.rice.edu.

Kevin Kirby, Rice’s vice president for administration and chair of the Crisis Management Team (CMT), said the primary post-storm concern has been “the large number of faculty, staff and students displaced from their homes, their schools closed, and many roads that are inaccessible,” he said. “That’s what’s made this particularly unusual.”

Students sort donations at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen on Aug. 30. Photo by Amy Kavalewicz

Jerusha Kasch, who became Rice’s director of institutional crisis management in January, began organizing CMT meetings shortly after Harvey’s threat became a possibility to make preparations for the storm. That included having Associate Vice President for Housing and Dining Mark Ditman make sure the serveries were well-stocked for the aftermath of Harvey.

When the storm passed, the team turned its efforts to recovery.

Provost Marie Lynn Miranda and Kirby sent updates several times a day to the community. Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson sent messages to students and to their parents to reassure them that students were safe. Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Seiichi Matsuda communicated with graduate students.

The CMT made arrangements for online mechanisms to gather information about who needed help and how others could lend a hand:

A needs-assessment form to quickly determine who among Rice faculty, staff and off-campus students needs help;

A building-status webpage to keep up to date on conditions;

A page to either offer or request temporary housing;

A Rice Hurricane Relief Fund to accept donations that will help members of the community recover.

Members of the Crisis Management Team meet in Harvey’s aftermath. From left: Director of Institutional Crisis Management Jerusha Kasch, Vice President for Administration Kevin Kirby, Provost Marie Lynn Miranda and President David Leebron. Photo by B.J. Almond

A sign-up page for the Rice Harvey Action Team, which was quickly organized to coordinate volunteer efforts. Through R-HAT, the Doerr Institute for New Leaders, Center for Civic Leadership, Rice Student Association and the Graduate Student Association worked to match volunteers with community organizations to help the city’s recovery.

At the height of the storm, Amina Qutub, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and her group set up an extensive page of links to resources for those affected by Harvey.

Miranda characterized the online efforts as “marrying our strengths in quantitative methods and engineering and science approaches, and deep concern for our people and our desire to live by Rice values.”

Perhaps the most dramatic example of that attitude was the rescue of two international graduate students from their off-campus apartment building on Kirby Drive near Brays Bayou. Rice University Police Department Chief James Tate, who joined the university in March, said RUPD attempted to reach the students twice but were stopped by high waters. Jeff Myers, a graduate of RUPD’s Citizens Police Academy and the husband of a Rice alumna and lecturer in computer science, stepped up to help with a truck large enough to ford the flood and bring Captain Clemente Rodriguez and Officer Jermaine Fazande to the scene. Fazande and Rodriguez found the students and guided them through the high water to the truck.

“I can remember listening to their transmissions on the radio,” Tate said. “Some (were) garbled because water was in the mic, so we couldn’t hear very well. And at one point, I said to Clemente, ‘I want you to try to get these folks, but be careful.’ When they finally said, ‘We got ’em,’ that was a moment for me.”

As was the case during Hurricane Ike nine years ago, government helicopters used parking lots by Rice Stadium to help transport patients, including a pregnant woman, to Texas Medical Center institutions across the street. Tate said he’ll long remember holding the frightened woman’s hand as he and RUPD officers helped move multiple choppers’ worth of patients to vehicles for transport, including that of Myers, who stayed on.

Tate noted the university’s entrances were impassable during the storm, with at least three feet of water at Entrance 17, near the police station at Stockton and University.

The Rice University Police Department was grateful for the time and efforts of Jeff Myers, a graduate of RUPD’s Citizens Police Academy who brought his high-water truck to help rescue two Rice graduate students from their off-campus apartment and take people from a makeshift helicopter landing pad at Rice Stadium to Texas Medical Center institutions. Courtesy of RUPD

Hundreds of students and staff worked volunteered at shelters, helped Houstonians clear their houses and delivered supplies.

Some gathered Aug. 30 at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen to accept emergency supplies for distribution to shelters. They reported collecting six truckloads of clothing, bedding and supplies.

Rice professors Christy Landes and Stephan Link and nine members of their research groups – including students and postdoctoral researchers from China, India, Germany and Iran – were among the many to help clear flooded homes. “We came in and worked our buns off, removing wet drywall and insulation,” Landes said. “I couldn’t be more proud of our science family.”

The Civil and Environmental Engineering labs of professors Qilin Li, Pedro Alvarez and Lauren Stadler were out in force to gather water samples for testing near the Brays and Buffalo bayous, at Cypress Creek and as far away as Katy.

Kasch praised the effort by Student Association President Justin Onwenu and presidents of each college to prepare an emergency shelter at the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center – in 24 hours. She said students “kept coming to the table saying, ‘What can we do?'”

She said the CMT had, by Sunday, recognized a possible need for on-campus shelter for members of the Rice community or even the neighborhood. “While we were building the needs assessment for our campus community, we also, on the parallel, asked the students if they would be willing to plan for and establish an emergency shelter,” Kasch said.

“We gave them assignment at about noon (on Sunday),” she said. “None of the students had ever even thought about how to do that or what the process would be, and within 24 hours they had a solid process, donations and management. They were able to lean forward and establish a fully operational shelter.”

Rice graduate student Seth Pedersen collects a water sample near Cypress Creek. Photo by Qilin Li

The online matching tool helped alleviate the immediate need. “Up until today (Friday), we thought we might be able to shelter emergency responders coming from outside of the state and even the country, but those responders got placement elsewhere, so we’ll be standing the shelter down today,” Kasch said. “We did not open the doors, but we could have. They were totally prepared.”

Kasch said other institutions can view the Rice students’ plan as a “best-practice” standard. “What our students did was truly incredible,” she said. “They were the embodiment of community.”

Hutchinson said he appreciated how willing staff and students have been to help and encouraged volunteers to work through R-HAT to coordinate their efforts. He noted in a post at emergency.rice.edu that college magisters planned a lecture series to keep them engaged, and that Rice’s recreation center and library remained open and popular through most of the storm.

Rice shuttles provided transportation for graduate students to reach local grocery stores before and after the storm so they could stock up on food and water, and Rice Emergency Medical Services offered several cardiopulmonary resuscitation classes during the week to help keep students occupied. Rice’s Student Health Services was available after the storm, though limited staffing at times forced it to limit service to injured and seriously ill students.

Rice’s soccer team was forced to cancel a trip to California for matches with San Jose State and St. Mary’s and rescheduled a game against the University of Houston from Aug. 27 to Sept. 4 as a fundraiser for the United Way of Greater Houston’s Flood Relief Fund.

Rice’s volleyball team was stuck out of town during the storm after games in Dallas and Fort Worth, but made its way to Waco, Texas, where the parents of one player arranged for lodging and practice space. The team traveled from there to the University of Colorado for a tournament and returned to Rice Sept. 3.

In the meantime, the Rice Owls football team holed up in Dallas, practicing there after returning from the Aug. 26 season opener in Australia. The team returned to Houston Sept. 1 and is scheduled to play at the University of Texas-El Paso Sept. 9.

The students and postdoctoral associates of Rice professors Christy Landes and Stephan Link helped a Rice neighbor clear a house of damaged flooring and walls. From left, Sudipta Roy, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) graduate student Behnaz Ostovar, applied physics graduate student Charlotte Flatebo, Lamar High School sophomore August Galliano, chemistry graduate student Kyle Smith, chemistry postdoctoral researcher Sean Collins, ECE graduate student Wenxiao Wang, chemistry postdoctoral researcher Ujjal Bhattacharjee, chemistry graduate student Yi-Yu Cai and research exchange student Niklas Gross.
Photo by Christy Landes