Hurricane Harvey Oral History Project Shelby Gonzalez HIST 5370 December 9, 2017 Hurricane Harvey Oral History Collection PROJECT TITLE: “Hurricane Harvey Oral History Project” NARRATOR: Dr. Kelly Quintanilla DATE OF INTERVIEW: November 6, 2017 INTERVIEWER NAME: Shelby Gonzalez DATE and LOCATION OF ITNERVIEW: Dr. Quintanilla’s office, Corpus Christi Hall at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Texas. President of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC), Dr. Kelly Quintanilla is one of many persons being interviewed for the “Hurricane Harvey Oral History Project” being conducted by Graduate Students in good standing in the History Master’s Program at TAMU-CC. Dr. Quintanilla explains to us the policies and procedures she followed to prepare the university and students for the possibility of Hurricane Harvey making landfall in Corpus Christi, Texas. This project was turned into the Hurricane Harvey Oral History Collection, which explores, uncovers, and highlights the lives of residents from South Texas who experienced Hurricane Harvey. The collection was created in an effort to ensure that the memories of those affected by the hurricane not be lose, and to augment the Mary and Jeff Bell Library’s Special Collections and Archives Department records. The collections contains interviews from residents of Port Aransas, the President of TAMU-CC,… (will be continued) 1 Dr. Kelly Quintanilla Narrator Shelby L. Gonzalez History Graduate Program Interviewer November 6, 2017 At Dr. Quintanilla’s office Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Corpus Christi, Texas SG: Today is November 6, 2017. I am here with the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi President, Dr. [Kelly] Quintanilla. We are going to talk about Hurricane Harvey [August 17, 2017 – September 3, 2017] and how she helped prepare the university for it. For starters, have you ever experienced a hurricane before Hurricane Harvey? KQ: Yes, I was here for Hurricane Bret [August 22, 1999], which was a much smaller hurricane – compared to Hurricane Harvey – and then I was here for Hurricane Rita [September 18,2005 – September 26, 2005] which did not actually hit us [Corpus Christi, Texas], but we had a mandatory evacuation; so I evacuated for it. This would be my third hurricane experience, but Hurricane Harvey was the first one that actually hit us, and was more impactful. SG: Okay, so you were more or less prepared in a sense, for yourself not so much for the university? KQ: Well, I was here at the university for all three of those. I have been here a very long time, twenty-four years [Laughter]. SG: How did you first hear about the hurricane? KQ: Well, because I am part of the Incident Command Team for the university, we receive tracking on all weather, particularly hurricane related whether, every storm that comes in, every warning. As the storms are coming toward landfall, no matter where you are at, you get frequent updates. At one point, it was about every fifteen minutes. We are constantly tracking storms or any heavy whether that might affect the campus. As the hurricane started moving, we noticed it coming more toward Corpus Christ. SG: Could you walk me through the process of preparing the university for the hurricane? KQ: We work on this all time. All of the folks that are on the Incident Command Team go through an online Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] training. Every year we also do hurricane drills, working on our readiness and making sure everything is in place. When I was Dean, we had something called “Islander Ready,” which helped us make sure we were prepared. As Provost, I was over the academic side, with academic preparedness. As Provost, you are “Deputy Commander.” Interestingly, as President – and this is maybe something we change – the CFO [Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration, Mr. Terry Tatum] is actually the “Incident Commander” in the old structure. This may change a bit, because it seemed very weird for me not to be the person technically in charge. I was still a part of all the decision making though. SG: Would you say that was a problem that you were not the one making the direct decisions? 2 KQ: Luckily, the CFO and I were together the whole time. So when we made the decision to close campus, we were actually in College Station. We had to go up there for a Board of Regents meeting and we were monitoring the whole time. I actually sent [Terry Tatum] back early, because the team here was meeting and we had conference called in. [Terry Tatum] and I worked together on everything. Technically in the FEMA structure, when the “Incident Commander” is in place that is the only person who is in charge, but that was not an issue at all. It definitely felt a little odd to me though, so we are going to work through that for next time. SG: Okay. What was some of the check points that you had to do in order to evacuate the campus? KQ: Each hurricane drill we do is when the university would evacuate. When we were in College Station, Terry Tatum and I sat down and looked at everything. To me, it was a pretty easy decision because what I saw was that this hurricane was hitting Texas. Student were not here already, it was literally going to be “Move-in Weekend” when the hurricane was going to hit. We knew for sure we were going to get big gusts of wind; well no one can move in with big gusts of wind. We also knew that even if it did not hit us, it was going to hit some part of Texas and I did not want students trying to travel through a storm. I did not want to add additional stress to students taking any chances about coming or not. Hurricanes can move you know, so you did not want someone thinking they could travel and then the storm moves. It just seemed to me, for the sake of parents and students, the easiest thing was to have everyone stay where they were. It was going to be safer for everyone involved. We also only had a few students who had already moved on to campus, so we only had to evacuate eight students. That made it a lot easier. SG: On campus, as in on Ennis Joslin [Rd.] as well? KQ: We do Camden [Miramar] and Momentum [Village]. We do those two because the university owns them, the other apartments on Ennis Joslin, students may be in those but we cannot tell them to leave. We did evacuate the students, particularly International Students who may not have anywhere to go.1 SG: Were you helping them find a place to go? KQ: Yes, we have a place for them in Laredo, Texas. We pick them all up and we take staff with them and they evacuate to Laredo, A&M International. They hosted us there. We make sure they are taken care of. SG: Did you evacuate or stay? KQ: I stayed. One of the things then, we had to decided when we were going to shut campus down, even though we were not going to have students move in, having been here at other times, to me I wanted us to shut down quickly so that we could get everything on campus in place. You know, you want to take thing up off the floor, make sure you wrap computers and unplug everything. We started that process immediately so we could shut campus down and people could go take care of their homes, leave and do what they needed to do. We got that all in place. My husband and I had always decided that if the hurricane was a Category Three of less, we would stay. We re-thought that decision [Laughter], and I felt really bad. My poor daughter, at the house had watched on television when the news announced that the hurricane had been upgraded to a Category Four, and she said “well I guess we are leaving now.” Well, it was too late at that point, so I felt really bad. Particularly since I was relatively new to this position as President, I did feel better being closer to the university, because I could then check out things quicker. There is a group that stays on campus, and they shelter down. It is mostly police, some of the Information Technology (IT) folks, and they protect campus and they make sure we have generates. We have data stored in other places, but they keep an eye on all those things. They were here, and I stayed in town on the South side of Corpus Christ. After the hurricane made landfall, that morning I heard on the radio it was clear so I drove over to campus. 1 “Welcome to Islander Housing,” Texas A&M University-Corpus Corpus Christi, accessed December 8, 2017, housing.tamucc.edu. Camden Miramar and Momentum Village are two TAMU-CC student housing complexes. Miramar is considered a more traditional on-campus housing experience compared to Momentum Village which is located on TAMU-CC’s Momentum Campus off Ennis Joslin Rd; making Momentum Village the best option for established students who want the benefits of on-campus housing and the feel of off-campus living. 3 SG: Did you lose power at your house? KQ: Yes, we went a week without power. It felt like forever. SG: That is a long time. Was it the day after the hurricane already hit that you went to campus? KQ: Yes, I had come back that next morning [August 26, 2017].