“Are you watching the news?” Raquel Moncado's mother asked urgently. “The Lake’s on fire. You’d better turn on the TV.”
So Raquel switched the channel. “There it was on my high-definition TV. That’s something you don’t want to see in all clarity.”
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Florence Kizza
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Some background
“The Lake” is Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, where Moncado works as an instructional technology specialist. A fire broke out in the main campus building on May 6th at 7:30 p.m. and burned into the early morning hours of May 7. No one was injured. More than 100 firefighters fought the flames, which were started accidentally by something electrical in the attic. Rebuilding will take three years or longer.
Main was home to classrooms, computer labs, faculty and administrative offices, conference rooms and more. OLLU has since received donations exceeding $1 million through its Rebuilding Fund and from other sources.
Now back to Raquel
“I wanted to be there,” says Moncado, who is also an alumna. “My instinct was to go. This place has become mine and my husband’s second home. So it was heart wrenching to see it on fire, especially the Main building.”
But her husband, also an OLLU alum, talked her out of it. Raquel acknowledges that had she gone, “there would have no purpose except to be distraught alumni.” She stayed home and began making calls.
First, she called Kimberly Gibson, OLLU’s instructional designer and a good friend. Gibson was on campus. Next, she called her boss, who was already en route. And she continued watching the news. On TV it looked like a whole block of buildings were on fire. We didn’t know what would survive.”
Moncado continued with the calls. Blackboard was next. They host OLLU's course management. She didn't have to worry about the server, but she did get them to “push a lot of bandwidth toward us.”
And the calls continue
Moncado spent the rest of the night on the phone, going back and forth between her boss and Gibson. “My boss was on campus, going through different offices. I'd receive requests to post something on Lake Online [Blackboard], and I’d call in the request."
By midnight everyone was hitting OLLU’s website for news – faculty, students and more. “We were afraid the website would collapse,” Moncado remembers, “So I put out announcements for faculty and staff to use Lake Online to take pressure off of the website.”
Moncado also put in a call to Wimba. OLLU had the whole Wimba suite, but hadn’t rolled out Pronto, the application that allows users to communicate via instant messages. Moncado and Gibson drafted up detailed instructions for users on how to download and use it. “It was spur of the moment and so easy for them to do,” she says.
Amidst all the phone calls, Moncado was functioning online. “I even got a Google account that night."
Finally, at 2 a.m., Moncado went to bed.
Stay tuned for Part 2: the morning after and OLLU’s rebuilding