AFTER-MATTHEW
Students, communities rally to help storm and flood victims
Campus Recovery
Students are reminded that it is not yet time to return to campus; classes are canceled through the rest of the week, parts of the city remain flooded and many roads throughout the area are damaged or impassable.
“As the Tar River continues to rise, additional roads will be impacted, making travel difficult and even dangerous,” said Bill Koch, associate vice chancellor for environmental health and campus safety. “For this reason, we are limiting operations to just mandatory staff and ask that students not return to Greenville from Fall Break until further notice. We expect to send a message on Friday by 2 p.m. regarding when it is safe to travel and when classes and operations will resume.”
Faculty members will work with their individual classes to make up work, and no student should be penalized for missing work during ECU’s closure, according to university policy.
Meanwhile on campus, Facilities Services staff has worked quickly to remove fallen trees and limbs, repair damage and clean up campus after the storm.
Bill Bagnell, associate vice chancellor for campus operations, said 64 trees on main campus, 17 trees on the health sciences campus and 41 trees at the North Recreational Complex, lost large branches or fell during the storm. Howell Science Complex and Building 172 had water in their basements, and other buildings had minor water damage from leaking windows or roofs.
“A lot of those trees are smaller, ornamental trees, but a few were bigger,” Bagnell said. “We lost a few trees that were easy to see right along Fifth Street.”
Crews were back on campus already on Sunday. “We’ve had an outstanding response from our team,” he said. “Some of them are braving the waters themselves to get here from other towns in the area, in order to get here and help us recover. I can’t say enough about their dedication to the campus.”
In the days since Hurricane Matthew passed through eastern North Carolina, low-lying communities have been assessing storm damage and preparing for the slow rise of the region’s rivers to levels that haven’t been seen since Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Members of the Greenville community, including East Carolina University students, have stepped up to help, gathering donations for shelters and volunteering their labor for storm cleanup and flood zone evacuations.
“It’s a little strange because it’s a pretty day and it’s back to business as usual for much of Greenville, but next door there’s a frantic effort to help people in need,” said Chris Crotty, a Brody School of Medicine student helping coordinate volunteer efforts and donations.
Students sort supplies donated for shelter residents.
Residents on both sides of the Tar River have been evacuated, including the relocation of many from Cypress Glen Retirement Community. ECU and Brody students, including the Pirates baseball team, were among the hundreds of volunteers who showed up with hand carts and box trucks to help move belongings, and then returned to form a sandbag brigade in an effort to shield the facility from the rising waters.
Seventy-five tons of sand were used to fill and set 7,000 sandbags, creating a wall about 850 feet long and five bags high between the retirement home and the river.
At Brody, donations for the area’s shelters quickly piled up at the entrance as students worked to sort through boxes of towels, hygiene supplies, baby formula and even toys.
Facilities staff work to clear limbs felled by hurricane-force winds
“My favorite so far is that giant stuffed lion,” said medical student Elizabeth Marshall. “Some kid is going to love that.”
Crotty said he and fellow Brody student John Hurley were working with the American Red Cross to get the supplies to the shelters where they’re most needed. The effort included medical, dental, nursing and other graduate students, staff, residents, faculty and family.
“All the agencies we’ve worked with have been overwhelmed with the support they’ve received,” Crotty said. “With the blessing and administrative support of Brody, we’ve gotten a lot of students involved and collected a lot of supplies.”
Trees and large limbs were down in several locations on campus.
The medical school also sent teams of students, residents and doctors to several shelters to help address basic medical needs. At Wellcome Middle School, some team members had already been on site for two days by Tuesday.
“We’ll stay until the job’s done,” said BSOM student Justin Smith.
Dr. Colin Smith, a resident at Brody, said the most common issue for the team is helping people who have left their homes without needed medications. “We can determine which of their medications are most critical, and make sure we can get those here,” he said. “It’s all the same things you deal with every day; they don’t stop with a storm.”
The medical teams can also treat minor medical issues. “We’re set up to provide emergent care but we hope that’s not needed,” Colin Smith said.
Students and other members of the community who wish to help are encouraged to contact the Red Cross at 252-355-3800, the City of Greenville Volunteer Center at 252-328-4614 or the Pitt County volunteer resource coordinator at 252-902-3976.
Justin Smith and Wooten Jones talk in the medical area of the shelter at Wellcome Middle School.