Hundreds of students hunkered down inside the North Servery cafeteria at Rice University last Friday, awaiting the hurricane that had Texas on high alert. With the windows boarded up and the walls surrounded with sandbags, only the howling wind could be heard from inside this fortress.</p>
<p>For 15 hours, Jake Keller, a bioengineering freshman at Rice, waited with 200-300 of his classmates for Hurricane Ike to pass over the Houston area.</p>
<p>We didnt really know when the storm started because the windows were boarded up, but we could definitely hear the wind, he said. It was kinda scary.</p>
<p>At 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, after the schools Crisis Management Team gave the OK, Keller said he emerged to find huge branches and bricks all around. He said most residence halls fared well enough, with only minor leaks and a few broken windows and that the trees and landscaping suffered the majority of the damage.</p>
<p>Rice was one of many colleges in the Houston area affected by Hurricane Ike. More than a week after the storm, the universities are still working to clean up the damage and return to a normal schedule.</p>
<p>The University of Houstons School of Architecture library suffered an estimated $2 million to $3 million in damages, said university spokesman Eric Gerber. About 20-25 percent of the universitys trees were destroyed.</p>
<p>Rice University was one of the few areas in Houston that did not lose electrical power during the storm, but the university did lose water pressure for two days after the hurricane. Sanitary tap water was unavailable for four days following the storm because a sewer line broke and contaminated the fresh water lines, Keller said. Rice had water reserves on campus.</p>
<p>Both Sam Houston State University and the University of Houston experienced short power outages in some of their buildings, but both were fully powered by last week.
Keller said because Rice was one of the only places in Houston with full power and drinking water after the storm, many Houston residents tried to get on campus to use the facilities. The Rice University Police Department was forced to barricade the parking lots to keep the campus secure, he said.</p>
<p>The University of Houston acted as a haven to many students, faculty and staff members because there was an air-conditioned library, hot food and showers, though the school was not a designated shelter for Houston residents, Gerber said.</p>
<p>Many of these amenities are still unavailable to Houston residents. Gas stations and grocery stores in particular are just now returning to normalcy. </p>
<p>Our grocery stores are definitely not at 100 percent right now, said Sam Houston State spokeswoman Julia May on Monday. They are in very, very short supply.</p>
<p>Sam Houston State resumed classes Monday, waiting until the immediate area around campus was better equipped to handle the returning students.</p>
<p>Rice and the University of Houston formally resumed classes last Tuesday. </p>
<p>In retrospect, we got lucky, Keller said. Compared to others experiences, ours was just a mild inconvenience.