The Flare
Friday, March 18, 2016 Vol. 79 No. 17 Serving Kilgore College since 1936
BY THE NUMBERS
8
70
41
inches
years
homes
On March 9, according to the Kilgore Police Department, rainfall was measured at eight inches from midnight until noon.
Rabbit Creek was the highest it has been in 70 years. Wednesday, March 9, the creek broke the 1945 record of 19.6 feet with 20.3 feet of water.
According to reports from CBS19, the flood affected 29 homes and the rain damaged 12 others for a total of 41 homes damaged.
Damage remains from flood OFF CAMPUS
Home of theatre instructor under four feet of water at worst point MEAGHAN MORTON Managing Editor Twenty-nine homes with soaked, dirt-packed carpet, a foul smell and lost belongings sit in Kilgore. Records of memories litter the ground, some salvageable and some not, all because of rain water. Michael Atkins, theatre instructor, was faced with the reality of flood damage after driving home during spring break. “Somebody texted my wife when we were on the road from Houston coming back to Kilgore that my house was flooded,” Atkins said. “We called my wife’s son and he went over to our house and it had four feet of water in it.” Currently Atkins and his wife are staying at his mother-in-law’s home while trying to recover what can be recovered during this time. “The Red Cross has been tremendous with all of this. The Southern Baptist Convention Men’s Disaster Relief are the ones that helped clean the house out,” Atkins said. “The Kilgore Fire Department personnel helped clean the house out too, and when I say that, not just throw stuff away, but I mean ripping out carpet and stuff like that.” Atkins described the feeling of finding your home in this kind of condition. “Think of the worst situation you can possibly be in with your guts turned inside out and your home looking like, and for all practical purposes, is ruined,” Atkins said. “You don’t know what it’s going to take, if it can even be fixed. So all of a sudden you have no base. You have no home, it’s underwater. When the water goes away, then that’s really going to be the mess.” When a home floods it brings in mud, silt, See FLOOD, Page 3
ON CAMPUS
Some flooding reported in KC buildings MEAGHAN MORTON Managing Editor Flood waters from the Sabine River, Rabbit Creek and Turkey Creek took over parts of KC Wednesday, March 9, during spring break. According to the KC Police Department, the parts of campus affected were the lower parts of the S.L. Canterbury Engineering and Science Building, the Anne Dean Turk Fine Arts Building and a ceiling leak in Masters Gymnasium. Jeanne Johnson, music department chair, said the flood in the basement of the FA Building was not the worst she has ever seen, but it was certainly bad enough. “This is probably the ninth or tenth time that the basement of Fine Arts has been flooded in the years that I have been here,” Johnson said. Because of this, over the years KC has taken precautions to protect the interior of the building from water damage. Carpets have been ripped out and the rooms have been covered with area rugs. “We have put up extra-high rubber borders around the walls so I didn’t see any damage to the sheetrock,” Johnson said. “So we didn’t have to cut out sheetrock or anything like that. The last time, we had to cut sheetrock.” Though the basement was covered in six inches of water, Johnson credits the quick turn-around to maintenance. “We had nine maintenance people here that morning after it flooded and they did a really terrific job and got it cleaned out pretty quickly,” Johnson said. “Hats off to them, they did a great job.”
KC board votes for new softball, band complex; tuition increase passed FROM STAFF REPORTS
Panoramic Photograph by Rain Cohn / THE FLARE
Flood waters rise on the Sabine River at Texas Highway 42.
Trustees voted to raise tuition and raze a building during KC’s regular business meeting Monday night. Tuition and fees for in-district students will take an 8 percent hike, from $63 to $68 per semester hour. Out-of-district tuition and fees will increase nearly 4.5 percent, from $134 to $140 per hour. Trustees approved the increase for the Fall 2016 semester 7-0. Trustees Scott Andrews and Bob Heath were not present. According to Joe Carrington, the increase will move KC from the least-expensive of the area’s eight community colleges to second least expensive after Paris Junior College. KC’s in-district tuition and fees are still about 20 percent less than area community colleges and 23 percent less than the state average for all community colleges. “In the past, I think we kind of had the Walmart strategy, thinking that if we had the lowest cost tuition, students are going to come to us,” Carrington said. “Unfortunately, our preliminary numbers for spring enrollment are down again, so we’re down about six years
in a row for enrollment.” The increase is projected to bring in an extra $600,000 — funds that will go to benefit students on campus, said Duane McNaney, vice president of administrative services. “We need to improve the information technology infrastructure, especially with supplying wireless access throughout the campus,” he said. While this project itself would, “carry a high price tag,” other proposed projects included hiring a database manager, adding lighting around campus and addressing roofing and plumbing concerns. “The student is the end-user who benefits the most from this,” McNaney added. Trustees also voted unanimously to begin Phase 1 of creating a KC Activities Complex on Houston Street, one block north of the Devall Student Center. “From this point on Kilgore Heights will no longer exist. It will now be known as the Kilgore College Commons,” said Dr. Mike Jenkins, vice president of student development. See BOARD, Page 3