President Gayle Hutchinson expressed her thoughts and reactions about the Oroville Spillway during the Academic Senate meeting Feb. 16.

“Sunday I was at home working on my dining room table in the afternoon enjoying a little sunshine outside when I get a text message from a friend of mine asking, ‘ Have you heard the Oroville Dam is possibly compromised?’, so that prompts me to say ‘no’ and I turn off the television and scroll on the internet to look at other news, and that’s where I began following the story,” said Hutchinson.

Hutchinson expressed becoming aware of the Oroville Dam situation just minutes before it was an emergency notice was announced through various sources.

She became in contact with Director of Environmental Health Marvin Pratt, the Emergency Operations Committee, and Red Cross to enact emergency protocol.

The main topics for immediate solution were:

• Shelter
• Service
• Volunteers
• Class

Decisions were made based on the the student population and circumstances.

“I’m very proud and very pleased with how quickly everyone responded, we got information out as fast as we could ,” said Hutchinson.

Jacqueline Morales can be reached at [email protected] or @jackie_theorion on Twitter.