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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
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Colleges Near and Far Offer Help to Campuses Stricken by Hurricane
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As colleges and universities along the Gulf Coast struggled to assess the damage from Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, offers of assistance began pouring in from campuses throughout the region.
In New Orleans and southern Mississippi, where the hurricane slammed ashore early Monday, communication was still practically impossible. Telephone lines were jammed, e-mail was not going through, and Web sites were down. But it was clear that, given the devastation to the region, the start of the academic year would be delayed for weeks for thousands of students, many of whom will need a place to stay until it's safe to return to their campuses.
Tulane University's New Orleans campus suffered extensive damage from the hurricane, and the situation threatened to worsen as rising waters and widespread looting caused further chaos in the city and forced the evacuation of the university's flooded hospital late Tuesday.
Tulane's president, Scott S. Cowen, said in a message posted Tuesday on an emergency Web site that until the damage is assessed, university officials would not know when students and employees could return.
"The situation is further complicated," he wrote, "by the fact that there is no power in the city, water levels continue to rise, all city roads are blocked, and the vast majority of our work force had to leave the parish as part of the mandatory evacuation order. It is unclear at this time when people will be allowed to return to the city."
At least two levees protecting New Orleans were breached on Tuesday, and water levels were rising, according to news reports. As conditions deteriorated, CNN reported that the city "resembled a war zone," with "no drinking water, dwindling food supplies, widespread looting, water rising in the streets, smoke rising on the horizon, and even the sounds of gunfire."
More than 1,000 people were being evacuated from the flooded Tulane University Hospital on Tuesday with the help of the U.S. military, a hospital spokeswoman told CNN.
"It's an unbelievable situation," the spokeswoman, Karen Troyer Caraway, said. "We're completely surrounded by water. There's looting going on in the streets around the hospital."
All of Tulane's students and employees, however, were safe, Mr. Cowen wrote in his message on the Web site.
Tulane was in the middle of freshman orientation as the hurricane approached over the weekend, and approximately 400 students were evacuated to Jackson State University, in Mississippi. Those students were being relocated again late Tuesday because Jackson State's power was out.
Tulane's emergency phone line was notifying callers that students should return home or to other shelters as soon as possible. The Jackson, Miss., airport was closed, but buses were taking students to Dallas and Atlanta, where they could make other travel arrangements or stay at local campuses. Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, and Georgia Tech University, in Atlanta, both offered to put students up.
Tulane's student-affairs office sent out an e-mail message earlier Tuesday asking colleges and universities in the region for housing for the next few weeks for hundreds of the stranded students, many of whom are foreign graduate students.
Despite all of the problems, the president ended his message on an upbeat note. "We are determined to move forward as quickly as possible and make Tulane University an even stronger and healthier institution," Mr. Cowen wrote. "We have been in New Orleans for 171 years and we look forward to another century in this great city."
Meanwhile, offers of help were coming in from far beyond the area. Metropolitan State College of Denver, for example, offered to play host to Tulane's Web site.
"We would create an address for Tulane inside our system -- basically a hole in our network -- to allow people to access Tulane's site," said George Middlemist, interim vice president for information technology at the Colorado college. He said he was waiting to hear back from Tulane.
Mr. Middlemist said that before the hurricane hit, he and his colleagues had been exploring ways that campuses could help each other in the event of a disaster. "This might be a good trial for us," he said.
The University of Texas at Dallas is also helping Tulane redirect people to its emergency Web site through an arrangement the two universities set up years ago.
In Mississippi, where entire communities along the Gulf Coast reportedly were wiped out by the storm, colleges were also pitching in to help. When officials at Mississippi University for Women learned about the magnitude of the approaching storm over the weekend, they broadcast a notice on public radio offering shelter to Katrina evacuees. (The college, which is located in Columbus, Miss., in the northern half of the state, has a dormitory for men with room for 210 people, but only 30 occupants).
About 250 people, most of them from the New Orleans area and many with children and pets in tow, took the college up on its offer. About 75 students from the college pooled their cleaning supplies and worked until about 2 a.m. Sunday getting rooms ready and helping storm refugees settle in.
The college was closed on Monday and Tuesday because of the storm, which knocked down trees and cut off power to much of Columbus. The campus, which still has power, opened its dining halls to the storm refugees and will allow them to stay while they wait for word on when it is safe to return, said Chris Holland, director of community living.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
- Hurricane-Lashed Campuses Across the Gulf Coast Region Will Remain Closed for Days (8/30/2005)
- With Hurricane Bearing Down on New Orleans, Orientation Turns to Evacuation (8/29/2005)