Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2008 APS March Meeting
Volume 53, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 10–14, 2008; New Orleans, Louisiana
Session V5: Panel Discussion: Lessons Learned from Katrina: How to Prepare a Department for Catastrophic Events |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS FGSA Chair: Andrew Post-Zwicker, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Room: Morial Convention Center RO1 |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:15AM - 11:30AM |
V5.00001: Lessons Learnt From Hurricane Katrina. Invited Speaker: Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and its suburbs on Monday August 29$^{th}$, 2005. The previous Friday morning, August 26, the National Hurricane Center indicated that Katrina was a Category One Hurricane, which was expected to hit Florida. By Friday afternoon, it had changed its course, and neither the city nor Xavier University was prepared for this unexpected turn in the hurricane's path. The university had 6 to 7 ft of water in every building and Xavier was closed for four months. Students and university personnel that were unable to evacuate were trapped on campus and transportation out of the city became a logistical nightmare. Email and all electronic systems were unavailable for at least a month, and all cell phones with a 504 area code stopped working. For the Department, the most immediate problem was locating faculty and students. Xavier created a list of faculty and their new email addresses and began coordinating with faculty. Xavier created a web page with advice for students, and the chair of the department created a separate blog with contact information for students. The early lack of a clear method of communication made worse the confusion and dismay among the faculty on such issues as when the university would reopen, whether the faculty would be retained, whether they should seek temporary (or permanent) employment elsewhere, etc. With the vision and determination of President Dr. Francis, Xavier was able to reopen the university in January and ran a full academic year from January through August. Since Katrina, the university has asked every department and unit to prepare emergency preparedness plans. Each department has been asked to collect e-mail addresses (non-Xavier), cell phone numbers and out of town contact information. The University also established an emergency website to communicate. All faculty have been asked to prepare to teach classes electronically via Black board or the web. Questions remain about the longer term issues of the size and stability of the faculty. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:30AM - 11:45AM |
V5.00002: TBD Invited Speaker: This abstract has not been submitted. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:45AM - 12:00PM |
V5.00003: Hurricane Katrina at Tulane. Invited Speaker: After hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Tulane University closed for the fall semester. Buildings on campus were closed and armed guards were hired to protect the campus. Faculty members were not allowed access to their offices and laboratories, except for exceptional cases when a Dean went with them. Many faculty members took their research groups to other universities accepting \textit{much welcomed} invitations from colleagues. Undergraduates went to other colleges and universities, which accepted the without cost and a promise not to recruit them. The university email system went down for months. Collecting information on the welfare of faculty and students was difficult. The university was run from Houston by a small handful of senior administrators. Setting up the schedule of classes for the spring 2006 semester was done without records. Most faculty returned to New Orleans after several weeks. 80{\%} of the city was flooded. Small trailers were provided. Some lived in the FEMA trailers for two years or more. When Tulane reopened, a wide reaching Renewal Plan, worked out by the upper administration, was implemented. A new \textit{emergency preparedness plan} was also developed and put in place. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:00PM - 12:15PM |
V5.00004: Invited Speaker: |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:15PM - 12:30PM |
V5.00005: Academic environment and dynamics in response to extreme events: Theory and Practice (Katrina Lessons) Invited Speaker: The possibility of a catastrophic event requires the department as a unit and the university as an organization to devise a comprehensive emergency response plan to minimize the impact and shorten the recovery stage. Does the academic organizational structure and environment possess key features for the possibility of successful response to extreme events? The post Hurricane Katrina experience of Louisiana universities offers data to address this theoretical question. It also emphasizes that the mitigation plan should include two aspects: preparing/protecting a university for/during a catastrophic event and assisting other academic institutions experiencing an extreme event. Short-term and longer-term statistics and other data pertain to the interaction of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (as an assistance unit) with the universities in New Orleans (units in distress), including the dynamics of student population, faculty influx, course adjustments, and response and recovery actions are presented. An attempt is made to categorize the losses and to assess the recovery quality and time. Faculty and institutional administration interviews are summarized to assist in developing future proactive response plans. UL Lafayette and UNO research capabilities and intellectual resources for developing complex models simulating the multi-variable effects of catastrophic events and providing adaptability in the decision-making process are investigated. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:30PM - 12:45PM |
V5.00006: Hosting a Katrina Evacuee. Invited Speaker: No individual or institution anticipated the impact on the academic research community of hurricane Katrina. When Tulane physicist Wayne Reed asked me to host his research group just a day or two after the disaster, with no authorization or understanding of the commitment, I agreed immediately and then pondered implications. Fortunately, colleagues helped in making the commitment real, only the bureaucracy of my public university posing small hindrances. Industry was remarkably generous in providing Reed with significant ``loaner'' equipment, and amazingly, a suite of custom Reed experiments was running within weeks. At the end, the most productive collaborations for Reed seemed not to have been with my group, with its similar research, but to other groups at my institution, particularly the synthetic chemists, who gained access to methods previously unique to Tulane while offering samples previously unique to UMass. Quickly designed projects exploiting this match turned out remarkably productive. Although begun with trepidation, hosting of Reed had huge positive benefits to me and UMass, and I believe, also to Reed and Tulane. Some key lessons for the future: (i) industry has capacity and willingness to help academic research during disruption (ii) commitment of a host institution must be immediate, without a wait for formal approvals or arrangement of special funding -- delay leads only to discouragement, (iii) continuing academic progress of displaced students must come first, and (iv) intellectual synergy rather than overlap should be the basis for seeking a host. Lastly, NSF or other funding agency should consider a program directly addressing the research needs of unexpectedly disrupted academic scientists, and most particularly, graduate students who face greatly extended studies. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:45PM - 2:15PM |
V5.00007: Panel Discussion
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