'It Wouldn't Stop Raining'

For the most part, hurricanes give fair warning that they’re coming—the problem is that their paths are so uncertain, even meteorologists can’t predict exactly where they will arrive or how strong they’ll be when they get there. That was the dilemma that universities in Houston, Texas, faced as they tracked the path of Hurricane Harvey.

“We began following our protocols for severe weather, which principally involve deciding when and whether to hold classes, when to make an announcement about that, and when to reopen,” says Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jones School of Business at Rice University. “Texas is a big state, and there were indications that Harvey might not be so severe or that it might take a path that left us almost dry.”

Harvey’s path was so capricious, the university had closed its campus the weekend before the hurricane struck— days that turned out to be dry. The Jones School set up a website, where it posted ongoing updates of campus closings. On Friday, August 24, Harvey was upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, and the university announced that while city government did not recommend evacuation, Rice would close campus as of 3 p.m.

Coordinating Communication

Normally, when it comes to hurricanes, officials are most concerned about wind and hail damage to structures and power lines. But by the time Harvey made landfall in Houston, its wind speed had decreased and it had been reclassified as a tropical storm—one that had become intractably stalled over the region. “It just wouldn’t stop raining,” says Rodriguez. “Meteorologists with the weather service had to put new colors on their graphics, because looding in its 100- and 500-year flood plains. Rodriguez and other Jones School staff members started getting texts and emails from many students, faculty, and staff who had to abandon their homes or seek higher ground on second floors.

“We quickly realized that we didn’t have the sort of all-out communication procedures we should have put into place earlier,” Rodriguez explains. “We designated people to make contact with different groups. We asked the leaders of each student cohort to try to reach out to students, while my team worked on faculty and staff. We had other staff members try to connect to alumni.”

As they sheltered at home, these individuals at first coordinated their activities via conference calls; soon, they centralized their efforts, importing the Jones School directory into a shared online Google spreadsheet and filling out columns to track each person’s most recent contact information and status; whether he or she was in need; and, if so, what that need was. 

Little by little, they connected with almost everyone in the directory. There were only a handful of people they couldn’t locate. “Those are the ones that haunt you,” says Rodriguez. For example, a student known to live in a risky area could not be reached, but eventually it was discovered that his cell phone battery had died. He had ended up at a Red Cross evacuation station in Beaumont, Texas, with his parents. Eventually, everyone was accounted for.

As Rodriguez and his team fielded these calls, one thing became clear: When people are cut off by floodwaters, help is inherently local. “It wasn’t enough that we knew that someone had lost power, or that someone’s first floor was flooding and that person needed to be moved to a safer place,” says Rodriguez. “We also had to know someone nearby who could help. We had a tremendous outpouring of people willing to help, but most people couldn’t go more than a mile or so. We had faculty tell us, ‘I’ve got a canoe. I can get there.’”

The school imported its directory into a shared online Google spreadsheet and filling out columns to track each person’s most recent contact information, status, and need.

Rodriguez himself answered a call from an international student who had been in the U.S. for only five weeks. His apartment was flooding, and he needed somewhere to go. “Luckily, he was close to me, so I picked him up and took him to the apartment of another student, who was happy to host him.” When Rodriguez and his team couldn’t help someone directly, they shared the person’s status and need with the proper authorities.

Rice University also adapted, so that by Monday afternoon it had set up a centralized assistance website to make it easier for people to connect.

By August 27, the storm had passed. Fortunately, the Rice University campus sits on high ground, so while the floodwaters surrounded campus, they never reached it; its buildings never lost power. A few homes in Rodriguez’s nearby neighborhood were flooded, but his home remained dry. Those who lived on and around campus were confined to campus for several days.

“Our food supplies got a little thin, but they were never threatened, so that was good,” says Rodriguez. The school had prepared itself to be an evacuee site, with cots to accommodate up to 450 people, but that proved unnecessary.

Switching to the Long Term

Once the hurricane had passed, within 24 hours Rice University created an action center as a hub that matched student volunteers with those in the community who needed help. The university has posted a video about this effort on YouTube.

In the days after the storm, the university switched from dealing with the short-term crisis to formulating a long-term response. Most people’s lives returned to normal, says Rodriguez, “but the lives of 6 percent or 7 percent of our students and faculty had been completely overturned—their homes had been damaged or they had lost pets. They were in a state of shock. For them, the emotional toll was as big as the physical toll. We had to ask how we could comfort and support the people around us who were experiencing deep loss.” The Jones School staff connected people to mental and financial counseling services as needed.

Staff also helped many who were affected find short- and medium-term housing, re-home pets, borrow vehicles, and secure cash for food or clothing. Teams of students, staff, and faculty helped homeowners and businesses with repairs, such as removing sheetrock and carpet ruined by water and mold. They even helped purchase birthday presents for a nine-year-old boy whose belongings had been destroyed.

In addition, the Jones School established an online fund dubbed ARK, for those who wanted to donate money to help the university community. The fact that the fund’s name sounds like a deliberate reference to Noah’s Ark is a coincidence, says Rodriguez. “The Jones School had been using the term ARK as our motto for the last year,” he says. “It stands for ‘attentive, responsive, and kind.’” As of September, the school had raised about US$30,000, which it used to provide grants and loans to students, faculty, and staff in need. Rice University has managed the ARK fund, handling the legal requirements so that the Jones School can provide the funds tax-free.

A Messaging Gap

Once administrators had time to evaluate their response to the crisis, they realized that their biggest challenge had been communication, says Rodriguez.

He and his staff had initially used phone calls, email, Facebook, and LinkedIn to contact people. However, they soon discovered that most students were connecting via messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and GroupMe, where the Jones School did not have an official presence. “I had used WeChat when I traveled with student  groups, but it didn’t dawn on us to use it more formally,” says Rodriguez.

He adds that as members of his team reported on someone’s status during the storm, it often wasn’t clear whether they had heard directly from that person or had heard about that person through someone else. “We wanted to hear information as directly as possible. On WeChat, it was clear that students were on this chat thread, using their own cell phones,” says Rodriguez. “It’s an essential communication channel, and we just weren’t on it. We should have been.”

Once Rodriguez and his team began using all three messaging apps, they discovered that students already were organizing help for each other using GroupMe. Overall, the apps proved to be far more effective, with students responding to queries much more rapidly than to conventional email messages.

“This was a moment when we stopped thinking about anything but caring for each other, which gave everybody a noble purpose. This opportunity for us to see each other rise to the occasion has helped build a strength in our community.”

The Jones School plans to add WeChat and similar apps to its communication protocols, perhaps assigning an associate dean or student leader to serve as a point of contact during a crisis. “We don’t plan to have such a regular presence that it interferes with the privacy of student conversations,” Rodriguez says. “But we have to adopt these platforms as the primary way we communicate with students during an emergency.”

While Hurricane Harvey brought to light areas where the school was not fully prepared, Rodriguez has been heartened to see how capable Jones School staff and students were at bringing a plan together so quickly.

“We have a greater sense of connectivity and pride, which comes from an acknowledgment of our shared vulnerability,” he says. “With all the rancor and pain in the world—and last summer was pretty tough, in terms of news stories— this was a moment when we stopped thinking about anything but caring for each other, which gave everybody a noble purpose. This opportunity for us to see each other rise to the occasion has helped build a strength in our community that wasn’t there before.”

Learning From Experience

Rodriguez has this message for his fellow deans: The time to create a crisis action plan is before a crisis hits. He recalls talking to Angelo DeNisi, who was dean of the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, when Hurricane Katrina hit that city in 2005. “I talked to him many times, but the lessons he shared were not in my immediate memory,” he says. “I now realize that talking through these experiences is valuable. We learned a lot in this one. I take these preparations more seriously today than I would have in the past.”

Another lesson: All business schools can be of special value to their communities in a crisis—their students, faculty, and staff can provide leadership, mobilize teams, work with local agencies, provide financial assistance, and help navigate government relief systems. After Harvey, some Houston businesses contacted the Jones School just to ask for volunteers to help them restock inventory or put stores back to rights.

“We realize how thin small and medium-sized enterprises can be when the system is shaken or when they lose a week or two weeks’ worth of sales,” says Rodriguez. “Business schools are far more than just our missions and our tasks. We’re collections of people in society, and we’re affected by anything and everything around us. Doing a great job for our students means understanding how to respond to events like these. Business schools should be working with each other to do better.”