We have a visit scheduled mid-September. The photos they are showing on TV of the Houston area looks so bad that this seems unrealistic. Should we try to move the visit back a few months?
Yes.
Aroundhere - are you in Houston area or is that based on watching TV as well?
I have family in the area, but I am safe on the west coast.
Even if Rice is dry, how would you get there, where would you stay?
I was just listening to a sports radio show and they are rearranging MLB, NFL games, college sports, etc. Even if the schools are dry, there are no hotels, no water, no gas, no cops available to work the games. If sports teams can’t travel to Houston, regular people won’t be able to.
I live in Houston, and I can tell you that the TV news presents a lot of melodrama that misrepresents the situation somewhat. In SOME places in Houston, the situation is dire, but the area in and around Rice will be back up to full speed quite quickly. Airports opened this afternoon. The neighborhoods around Rice are dry and suffered little or no damage. I work 15 miles from my home, and I’m traveling to my office without a problem. I think it’s entirely realistic to expect that your visit will occur as scheduled. TV news is not a good place to get your information. The University itself will be a much more helpful source of information.
ok thank you. I will hold on to the reservations and keep watching. I appreciate the update and wish you the best. Everyone is hoping Houston will recover. (I made my donation yesterday).
Definitely call the hotel and confirm that they expect to be able to accomodate you for your reservation. I would also call again a couple days before you arrive.
Rice has been closed since 3 p.m. August 25th, and will re-open at noon September 4th. I’m glad to hear that some people are doing well, but there are many students and staff at Rice who have been impacted by the worst natural disaster (in monetary terms) to ever hit the United States. This is not a situation that can in any way be construed as “melodramatic.”
If you want the current story of what is going on at Rice as they recover from the storm, go to their website and click on the red bar across the top of their home page.
It may be that those who live in Houston are focused on their own small picture and not seeing the larger view, as well. The disaster zone is about the size of New Jersey, so one person saying “things are gonna be fine” is not the whole picture. There is a lot of variation as to how various neighborhoods are affected, but no neighborhood is an island and depends on a working city for things like delivery trucks to the stores, garbage collection, maintaining stop lights, etc. As in post #8, just because a location is dry does not mean all their employees are making it in to work, or that their suppliers are delivering, or that their attention and resources are back to business as usual.
Of the three households of my extended family in the Houston area, only one is flooded out (and moved in with one of the other two for now). One had their “go bags” ready, but the deep flooding stopped maybe a mile away at most. The other has intermittent power and limited access to the world with routes cut off, but is at least dry and has supplies packed in.
I will say if you are worried about future hurricanes, Rice does take care of their students.
While Rice escaped the worst of the flooding it was not completely dry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSQmJBKe_AI
@Trotskii Aren’t you the lucky Houstonian!
Well, no, I wouldn’t call myself lucky. But I would say that it’s better to receive information about Rice University FROM Rice University rather than from the local or national media.
Currently at Rice. Rice itself was thankfully never majorly flooded, and as I write our immediate area is mostly back to normal (many businesses are open, roads are clear), so I think arriving mid-September will not be an issue. You will be able to see a fairly normal Rice. However, the greater Houston area will not as a whole be back to normal by then, but if your goal is to see Rice and the immediate surrounding areas it’s perfectly fine.
thank you for the updates - I really appreciate it. I also wish best of luck to those in the Houston area.
As @GoldOwls said, Rice and the area around it are fine now. Classes resume on Tuesday. My office is less than 2 miles from the campus. I picked up my daughter and took her to lunch in the Rice Village yesterday. Rental cars may be in short supply, but Uber or Lyft should get you where you need to go. If you stay near the campus, you should be able to get around without any problem.
The “Explore Rice” event on campus went on as planned on 9/10 with no issues at all.