TCC closes districtwide due to winter storm

TCC had to close campuses for four days due to an ice storm that swept the state of Texas.

On Monday Jan. 30, TCC issued a notice that all campuses would be closing at 1 p.m. that day due to inclement weather. The initial notice stated that the closure

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would extend to the next day. Over the week, additional notices letting students and faculty know the status of the district were sent out until the district reopened on Friday at 10 a.m..

According to director of emergency management Kirk Driver, the weather over the week is classified as a winter storm and requires extensive monitoring from the winter weather team here at TCC.

“What we do as the winter weather team, it kind of starts with the department of emergency management and our relationship with the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth,” he said. “They integrate a lot with emergency managers across the region, and they provide us a level of detail for weather events. That would help us make it easier if we have to decide on a change of operations for our organization.”

The winter weather team involves the department of emergency management, the police department, the chief operating officer, the vice chancellor for external affairs and communications and then the chancellor, Driver said. They are the ones who consider the reports given by the weather service as well as communicate with surrounding districts to determine whether to close the campuses or not. In this case, the forecast that had come out on Sunday regarding the initial impact of the ice storm was not correct for the conditions that were seen on Monday, and that is when Driver had to have conference calls with the weather service and relay that information to the rest of the weather team. See Freeze, page 2