<p>From today's Washington Post: a Tulane parent leaves her Freshman daughter in the path of Isaac. </p>
<p>Out</a> of the helicopter, into the hurricane - The Washington Post</p>
<p>Fairly amusing. Personally I don’t quite get going to the Best Western instead of Reilly, since it was well established Reilly would be on generator power. But to each their own.</p>
<p>I enjoyed reading that. </p>
<p>Fallenchemist, Reily wasn’t open to everyone- only students living in Aron or off campus.</p>
<p>Jph - You are right, so I guess that theoretically made sense. Although in hindsight it sounds like they were no better off at the Best Western.</p>
<p>I thought Tulane handled the storm overall very well.</p>
<p>I do fault them for suggesting that the back up generators would keep the dorms lit up. Had we known that the dorms could go dark, we would have had our kid bail. 30 hours of lock down, no power or AC, not being able to open a window, sleeping in the hallway – yuk.</p>
<p>I suspect the kids who stayed in the dorms fared worse than the kids from Aron and Irby and Phelps who bailed because they weren’t psyched about sleeping in a cot or on the floor of Reilly and Hertz.</p>
<p>My kid told us that the rez halls had back up power. Not sure if she mis-understood or if that was kind of the story that the RAs were telling. </p>
<p>Apparently, JPH093 thought the same thing as my kid: “And Monroe (as well as the other dorms) has a back up generator so power won’t be lost, at least for too long.”</p>
<p>Here’s what Tulane’s website said, which is vague to misleading on the point: </p>
<p>What happens if the power goes out?
While the university does not anticipate any significant power outages, the residence halls have emergency lighting and the university has its own power generating capacity if Entergy’s power goes down.</p>
<p>northwesty - I agree. I wonder why, knowing that Monroe, Sharp, etc would not have AC or even basic power they don’t advise alternate plans. I know they had enough pull with Entergy to get the power back to campus before much of the surrounding area. My D, in a house essentially right across the street from campus, didn’t get power back until about 24 hours later than Tulane. Still, given the heat and humidity this time of year…</p>
<p>In the end the kids came through it fine, many made new friends quickly and I loved hearing about those that learned new skills, such as how to play poker. Now that it is over and they are all safe, it is a story they will tell all their lives. Overall I would give Tulane a B+. I think there are still some communication issues and on the ground issues that could have been a bit better, keeping them from an A. I hope they can handle in-room water damage (Butler seems to have been hit hard this way) quickly and completely.</p>
<p>A hurricane is unpredictable, so hindsight is 20/20. And no one was in any kind of danger at any point.</p>
<p>Since a campus evacuation basically means a week closure minimum, I got the feeling that TU wanted to keep the kids close by so they could possibly re-start classes on Thurs and Fri.</p>
<p>I suspect many more kids (including my kid) would have bailed if told “TU has some amount of backup power, but only enough to keep a few buildings lit up at any one time. So if the whole campus goes out, your dorm may not have any power.”</p>
<p>My kid was excited to stay for a couple of days of forced frosh fun. It seemed stupid to leave since she thought her dorm had its own back up power supply. I was surprised when she told me that, since that would involve a LOT of back-up capacity. When the lights went out Tuesday night, she obviously found out what the real story was.</p>
<p>My kid also chose to stay–we would have been able to get him out on our return flight last Sunday night, but he really wanted to remain with his new friends. I believed that the University would not have allowed the kids to stay if there were safety concerns. Yes, it was hot and he didn’t sleep well in the hallway on Tuesday night, but he and his floormates survived and now feel close to each other in an incredible way. I was actually a little bit worried about how the kids who evacuated would feel when they returned–but they have been embraced by those who stayed and are fitting right in, according to my son. </p>
<p>One good thing about being from Maryland, where having PEPCO as our supplier means that many of us have numerous power outages, is that a couple of days without power doesn’t seem so bad…we have the flaslights and battery powered radio at the ready, and have all of our cellphones and laptops charged and ready at the first hint of a storm.</p>
<p>The res halls technically did have back up power… which lasted us all of 30 minutes. And we were all a little bit frustrated that two days after the hurricane the LBC, which was being used for nothing, had power while the dorms didn’t. But everything is good now, and we are all much better friends after being locked in a building together.</p>
<p>Did the showers work throughout the hurricane? You had hot water?</p>
<p>Showers were very, very cold and only worked on Mo 2 and 3. Not sure about Sharp.</p>
<p>Survivalist training!</p>
<p>JPH – just curious for future reference (since my kid probably isn’t interested in having another lock down/no power hurrication). Why did the rez halls only have power for 30 minutes? </p>
<p>I assume it was because TU only had enough capacity to keep a certain number of buildings lit up . So once the whole campus goes out, TU had to triage where to use the limited power (police station, health center, etc.). </p>
<p>Is that right?</p>
<p>We only had it for 30 minutes because the backup generator died. I think the backup generator is more geared towards keeping the building powered if we lose it briefly to like a lightning strike or something. I don’t think the generator was built to handle 2 days of no power. I’m pretty sure every building has it’s own backup generator so I don’t think Tulane had any control over which building had power during the hurricane.</p>
<p>Found this in the TU emergency plan.</p>
<p>The dorms have zero back up except for emergency lights.</p>
<p>Co-Generation</p>
<p>With the installation of the co-generation unit in the power plant, emergency power is provided to selected buildings on the uptown campus. The unit provides just over 4000 kW of power, a little less than half of the universitys total power demand. Therefore, only a select number of buildings are capable of using it as a direct source of power.
The following buildings are on-line for receiving power from the co-generation unit when power from Entergy is lost during a hurricane:</p>
<p> Reily
Bruff Commons
Telecommunications
Stern Hall
Lindy Boggs
ESB (freezers only)
Lavin-Bernick Center (LBC)
Facilities Services
Power Plant
Diboll (TUPD only)</p>
<p>2 Uptown Emergency Generators</p>
<p>The following buildings are served by fixed emergency generators as indicated:
Administrative Hurricane Plan 2012
Revision 0 June 1, 2012 34
Reily
Wilson Center (emergency lights only)
Diboll (TUPD only)
Telecommunications
Weinmann Hall (emergency lights only)
Blessey Hall (fisheries research lab only)
In addition, a portable generator will be provided at the Student Health Center.</p>
<p>4 Uptown Other Buildings</p>
<p>All other buildings will receive power only as it remains available from Entergy.</p>
<p>Good stuff and good to know. Thanks!</p>
<p>Welcome all ye who are now part of the “hurrication parents” club! My ds reminded me that although he was evacuated for Gustav and has now weathered Isaac, he is no longer a Tulane student, even though he lives right by campus with 2 grad students. OK, he’s an alum. He still has a nervous nellie mom here. Sorry. He will have to deal with that.</p>
<p>Hey- Tulane freshman here. I live in Butler and they told us we have a back up generator, the power will only be down for like 5 min before it kicks back in. Lies. The RAs were lied to and in turn passed it to us- there were never generators. The emergency lights were annoying and useless as all they did was strobe light the halls very slowly for a few hours before turning a creepy, not useful, dim red.</p>
<p>Sleeping in the hall was just the first night. Power was out for about 34 hours, ac for about 56.</p>
<p>Water did run and wasn’t horribly cold but they made people use lower floors’ bathrooms due to drainage.</p>
<p>As far as food- it was crummy. We were fed granted, but I can’t have gluten (and did inform them when signing up for rations). Anything for us allergy kids until we got to go to bruff? nope (but I had stocked up prior so it was ok.) The gluten-free fridge has been running on empty for a 3-4 days now but should be restocked today. Bruff in general was lacking variety (aka food) until around Sat when they got shipments</p>
<p>It wasn’t poorly organized. But the RAs and other personnel stepped up immensely and made it work. They made thousands of sandwiches and cooked dinner and kept everyone calm when they had little to no idea of what was going on either.</p>