Disaster Response Plans Help Schools and Colleges Weather the Storm
Are you prepared to respond to and recover from the onslaught of catastrophic weather events that seem more common these days? No matter where your institution is located, an extreme storm could strike your school or college during any season, pounding your community with high winds, floods, power outages, structural damage, and a chaotic aftermath.
Planning and following through on your disaster procedures can keep people and property safe, minimize academic disruptions, and support your community. No one learned that lesson better than United Educators (UE) members in the hard-hit Gulf area when back-to-back hurricanes pounded Florida and Texas in 2017.
As Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston with devastating rainfall, Rice University, Texas Southern University (TSU), and Houston Community College (HCC) tapped into disaster plans to lessen damage from quickly rising waters.
Hurricane Irma lashed Florida with high winds and storm surges after demolishing some Caribbean islands. Miami Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) managed its own crisis while sheltering evacuees. Members of the Florida College System Risk Management Consortium (FCSRMC) experienced costly damage, especially in Key West.
Whether your institution is in a coastal area prone to hurricanes and nor’easters or a tornado or snow belt, you can learn from leaders at these institutions who implemented their disaster-response procedures to hold their communities together.
Harvey Leaves Houston Under Water
Hurricane Harvey’s floods inundated Houston homes and displaced families. Compared to their sodden, surreal surroundings, UE members fared relatively well, with some flood damage to buildings and infrastructure. Planning for such disasters, monitoring issues during the crisis, and maintaining communications throughout and after the event helped Rice, TSU, and HCC safeguard their facilities and people, assist the community, and restore academic operations as quickly as possible.
“This was a very bad, flood-driven storm,” said Renee Block, director of risk management at Rice. “We had 50 inches of rainfall in Houston during the peak of the storm, making it difficult to get to campus. A member of our crisis management team, who lives in the neighborhood across the street from campus, waded through two to three feet of water when he tried crossing the street.”
Block estimated the university experienced approximately $2 million to $3 million in damage from fallen trees, debris, lost equipment, and water penetration in buildings. “Our facilities staff helped minimize the damage to campus structures,” she said. “As part of our ride-out crew, they were present during the storm, inspecting buildings daily. They identified areas where water had begun to penetrate buildings—maybe in the basement or first floor areas—and made temporary repairs to keep the water from continuing to flow in.”
Rice’s crisis management team began meeting about four days before the hurricane hit. The team included representatives from facilities, engineering and planning, environmental health and safety, housing and dining, crisis management, public affairs, human resources, university police, academic affairs, and communications. The university, which did not lose electricity, sent daily email reports to students, faculty, and staff. Rice arranged for service providers to deliver additional food for students who remained in on-campus housing.
“After a 2008 hurricane, we recognized the need to provide child care options for employees so our employee parents could return to work,” Block said.
Harvey floods also shut down TSU for a week. “For us, it was largely flood water,” says Mellany Patrong, insurance risk specialist. “We didn’t have much damage due to wind-driven rain. We had water, water everywhere, primarily in our buildings with basements, where we took on about two to three feet of water.”
Tiger Walk, a main thoroughfare in the middle of the campus, looked like a small lake, she said.
“Fortunately, with a hurricane, we have a little bit of lead time so we could activate our emergency protocols,” Patrong said. “We began our standard preparations, making sure nothing of value was on lower shelves in basements.” Another important step was to pump water out of the tunnel system that houses TSU’s electrical equipment to maintain power. “We follow a checklist: generator prep, tying down loose articles, making sure students are cared for and have meal service, activating emergency personnel and medical staff, moving vehicles normally parked in lots, and making sure emergency supplies are on hand.”
About 600 students and emergency staff sheltered in place. For off-campus students, faculty, and staff whose homes were hard hit, the university sponsored fundraising campaigns, marketed to the public through various media outlets. “At that time, everybody was ready to give,” Patrong said.
Preparedness is the key. “Make sure you have emergency responders trained and have agreements with [loss] mitigation firms to ensure you are in the priority list. Once the storm hits, if you’re in a populous area, you could find yourself way down the line,” Patrong said. “I can’t stress enough how important that is. Our contractor responded within two hours of our call. As soon as the roads were passable, they were bringing in water-extraction, drying, and dehumidifying equipment, which was in high demand throughout the city.”
Robert McCracken, HCC’s executive director of risk management, also emphasized the need to prepare. “Planning is really a year-round event,” he said. More than 300 HCC managers and leaders completed training offered by FEMA’s National Incident Management System, which facilitated a high degree of teamwork, communication, and collaboration for Hurricane Harvey.
“Before and during the storm, we met at least twice a day to coordinate our efforts and modify our plans based upon events,” McCracken said. “Following the storm, we held a lot of meetings to stay coordinated and ensure we were all moving in the same direction to maximize student success.”
With six colleges across the Houston area, HCC suffered relatively minor damage to individual buildings. “We had a fine arts center that was flooded and had to be closed for repairs and renovations, but in terms of infrastructure, we came out very well,” McCracken said. “IT and power systems remained operational.”
“The effort we put in six or nine months [before the hurricane] on responding to disasters was well worth it,” McCracken said. “You can only do so much work in the few days before the storm. It’s really about getting a large group of people ready to respond long before it happens.”
However, he praised the work of the HCC staff who put in numerous hours as the storm approached to prepare, plan, and respond, as well as the work by the maintenance and facilities departments in ensuring equipment, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and power systems, remained dry and operational. They also removed debris from drains to prevent clogging and reduce flooding.
In addition to securing and repairing facilities, it’s important to offer flexible leave to employees, many of whose homes were damaged. “During the first week of the storm, we were closed, and everybody got paid,” McCracken said. “For the most part, everybody was able to return home or had found alternate housing by Labor Day weekend. Our human resources made adjustments to the leave schedule so if people needed to take additional time, they had it available."
Irma Brings Damage, Evacuees to Florida
Florida institutions, no strangers to tropical storms, were ready for Hurricane Irma’s high winds, knowing the damage it had caused in the Caribbean.
“We typically close when we receive a hurricane warning and the winds exceed 45 miles per hour because our buses cannot run,” said Michael G. Fox, M-DCPS risk and benefits officer. “We shut down Thursday to prepare for Irma."
The school district, at the county’s request, opened 42 school shelters—including special needs and pet-friendly shelters—that housed approximately 30,000 evacuees. During their stay, which for some lasted nearly a week, evacuees received breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “We are an evacuation zone for the Keys, so we had many people from the Keys come up,” Fox said.
The district also welcomed an influx of about 700 students from Puerto Rico and several Caribbean islands whom Irma displaced. “Miami is the gateway to Latin America, so we are always prepared to receive students from other areas; we take it in stride,” he said.
Before the power failed, school officials kept parents and employees up to date through DirectConnect, an automatic phone bank, as well as its website, Facebook, and Twitter. Post-storm, school administrators collected information using the internally developed Damage Assessment App, which asks users a series of questions, such as “Do you have power? Is anything blocking the roads? Do you have property damage? Is there flooding? Can you reopen?”
“The answers to these questions are fed to our command center so we can marshal our resources to schools that need immediate assistance,” Fox said.
A disaster-recovery manual guided actions both pre- and post-storm. “It’s important to have a handbook to get you through it because you have to address multiple issues” across about 350 school sites and $10 billion in property, he said.
“We have about 350,000 students, so it’s really important we get back up and running as soon as possible. The community relies on the school system to restore normalcy,” Fox said.
That requires preparation before the storm and a strong response afterward. “Beforehand, we made sure our buses were full of gas and tied down and debris was picked up,” Fox said. “Post event, we have to make sure the roads are clear of fallen trees and downed power lines, traffic lights are working, and police can assist with traffic so we can transport kids safely."
Academic adjustments were also necessary. “The closure is affecting our standardized testing because our students have not been allocated enough instructional hours to be on the same par with other districts or parts of the country,” he said. The state granted the system’s appeal to move the testing date, allowing more preparation time.
Of the 27 colleges in the FCSRMC, 12 incurred damage from Irma, said Chauncey Fagler, FCSRMC executive director.
All implemented mitigation plans and worked with their emergency operations centers. “Every college in our system has autonomy to operate the way it chooses, but the mitigation plans are similar. Before the storm, they start going through their well-rehearsed steps to prepare, such as securing operating systems and making sure roof hatches are closed,” Fagler said.
In mid-November, the estimated total damage stood at $16.5 million; building damage was from water intrusion from roofs, windows, or rising water. “Because the Florida Keys was hit with Irma before the storm was downgraded, naturally Florida Keys Community College had the most damage with $6.5 million,” Fagler said. “The other 11 colleges incurred some form of leakage, rising water, with cleanup to mitigate mold."
Most roofs stayed in place, largely because of efforts to upgrade them to current building codes after previous storms. “Our state learned from the 2004 to 2005 storm season, and our college system took the steps necessary to be well prepared. To put this into perspective, the Florida College System represents 27 state colleges, hosting 175 campuses with 2,000 facilities, comprising $8.2 billion in facility assets. When one considers the impact Irma could have been, $16.5 million in damages is within the expected loss ranges,” Fagler said.
By Margo Vanover Porter, a freelance education and business writer