Ball State University's Crisis Management Team will meet today to review the university's response to last week's ice storm and prepare for future weather-related events, the dean of students said.
"We learned to cooperate," Randy Hyman, who also is the team coordinator, said. "We recognized the importance of [connecting] with colleagues in the community and sharing our resources in terms of space and staff and expertise."
The team wants to be better prepared for future weather emergencies, and Muncie is not done with bad weather yet.
The National Weather Service kept Muncie under a flood watch and wind advisory Wednesday. The city will remain under the flood watch for the next couple days, Mike Koch, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Indianapolis, said.
Although Koch was predicting severe thunderstorms to produce an inch or two of rain between Wednesday night and today, he said that would be enough to cause more flooding. The ground is already saturated so there is nowhere for the water to go but up, he said.
The storms will be severe enough, however, to knock down some trees and possibly cause more power outages. There is not much the crisis team can do to prepare for the flooding except evacuate certain areas if authorities put out the order, he said.
Despite Tuesday's heavy rain and Wednesday's flooding in parts of East Central Indiana, Hyman said he doesn't expect flooding to be a problem on Ball State's campus.
"We've had some minor water intrusion in the basements of some of the residence halls but nothing significant," he said.
To cope with a possible future ice storm, Hyman said the university maintains contact with Ball Memorial Hospital, American Red Cross, Director of Emergency Management for Delaware County Bill Gosnell and Mayor Dan Canan. Gosnell and Canan provide Ball State with services from the Muncie Police Department, fire department and local power companies.
The local services would also help provide shelter for students if the residence halls lose power again, Hyman said.
"We would look at a variety of alternatives to accommodate our resident students within the university and the community," he said.
Ball State does have back-up generators for all of the residence halls and some academic buildings, Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president for facilities planning and management and member of the crisis team, said. He said the generators, however, are typically for life-safety purposes such as fire alarms and emergency exit lighting.
The Teachers College, Burkhardt Building, Administration Building, Robert Bell Building and the Field Sports Building are among those with access to these generators. Noyer Complex also has a generator that supplies power to Ball State's phone service, Kenyon said.
The generators proved useful when Muncie residents found themselves without power for a few hours again Tuesday night because of thunderstorms and high winds, Jim Riggle, community affairs manager for Indiana Michigan Power, said. All the electricity that went out Tuesday was restored within three hours, he said. Indiana Michigan Power still anticipated having everyone's electricity restored by Wednesday night.
The Crisis Management Team meets periodically and is committed to suggesting "changes to internal policies to avoid/minimize a repeat of the crisis situation," according to its protocol.
Hyman said the team also receives daily weather updates from David Arnold, associate professor of geography, and uses them in its preparation efforts. The team also met with President Jo Ann Gora a few weeks ago to discuss its plan of action for last week's ice storm, Kenyon said.
"We've always made sure we had the right people at the right place to deal with any circumstance because no two incident is ever the same," Kenyon said. "I think we're very progressive in that area, and in fact we've worked quite well in this incident."
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