2022 LSU Gumbo - Book - Page 83
After week one of classes, out-of-state freshmen found
themselves experiencing a less-than-warm welcome to
Louisiana: the arrival of Hurricane Ida. For some who resided
outside the Gulf or Atlantic coasts, the storm – ranked as one of
the most powerful to ever hit the U.S. – was their first hurricane
they’d ever experienced.
With nowhere to evacuate, the students felt stranded, hours
from home.
Ida, a Category 4 hurricane, was the first to make landfall
in the 2021 season with sustained winds of up to 150 mph.
Though LSU was spared for the most part from weeks-long
power outages and building damages, the preparations took
many freshmen by surprise.
Mechanical engineering freshman Keleigh Knowles had
never experienced a hurricane in her home state of Michigan.
She stayed with another Michigan native and a student from
Illinois, so no one in her party had braced for hurricane winds
before.
“It was the three midwestern kids who had no clue what was
going on,” Knowles said.
The three students huddled in a small Taylor Hall dorm
room that afternoon on Aug. 29, supplied with food and cases
of water by the The Five dining hall. They decided to stick out
the hurricane together, so they weren’t alone.
Her friend shared that it was better to be on the west side
of a hurricane, so Knowles said she was hopeful the Pentagon
Community wouldn’t be hit too hard.
The wind blew weaker than expected, and she saw students
run to play basketball on the Pentagon Activity Center’s court
after losing power.
‘My first hurricane… is one category less than Katrina’
Biology freshman Tristan Norwood’s home state is
California. After hearing that Ida was upgraded from a tropical
storm to a Category 4 hurricane, Norwood remembered
thinking, “My first hurricane that I’m about to go through is
one category less than Katrina.”
What stuck out most for Norwood, though, didn’t happen
during the tour Ida took through campus -- it was the eerie,
quiet and familiar chill before the storm began.
“There was nothing wrong with [the weather]. If anything,
it was beautiful, but it was too beautiful,” Norwood said. “The
temperature and the air felt like what it was like in California
before I left. Out of the entire two weeks I had been here, I had
never felt this cool of air. That’s what threw me off.”
Staying in South Hall, Norwood felt fortunate to have not
lost power. Other students shared a different experience.
Mechanical engineering freshman and San Antonio, Texas
native Nicolas Frey stayed in Camellia Hall, where residents
lost power for two days.
“It was rough not having AC,” Frey said. “Definitely had to
change the sheets.”
During the second day without electricity, LSU gave him
and the rest of the dorm’s residents access to other dormitories
to charge their devices in lobbies and study rooms.
Frey’s only hurricane education came from television shows
and movies -- he was shocked to see the empty parking lots
considering the hassle of finding an empty spot only days
earlier.
“I didn’t really know it was going to be as bad as it was until
it was too late, and going home would’ve taken 20 hours,” Frey
said, mentioning that his parents constantly called him to
ensure he was okay. “My roommate wanted the blinds down. I
said ‘no, we’re watching it.’”
He passed the hours by checking anonymous chat app
YikYak and watching Netflix. Looking out of his window at
one point, he saw people outside playing football and spikeball
in the rain.
General business freshman Jacob DiPane, from Colorado,
said he had to evacuate to Oxford, Mississippi. His family was
“terrified” and wanted him to go further north to Tennessee.
He ended up staying in Mississippi and hoping for the best.
DiPane said the hurricane made his transition to college
more difficult as he’s had to learn new software programs
required by his courses while dealing with extended power
outages and sparse internet service.
“It’s been a little confusing,” DiPane said. “We went to the
first week of classes and started to get into a rhythm and then
we got a whole week off.”
General business freshman Avery Krautsack, an Illinois
native, shared the same sentiment, saying the workload after
the hurricane was also a challenge when transitioning to
college. He said after a whole week being off school, he had
two weeks worth of work when school resumed.
“It was hard managing time with everything else going on
in life,” Krautsack said.
Freshmen interested in pursuing Greek Life, like finance
freshmen Emma Woodruff, had to juggle the added course
load caused by the university’s weeklong closure along with an
extra week of Greek recruitment, which had been delayed by
Ida.
“[Adjusting to college] was kind of difficult,” finance
freshman Emma Woodruff said. “I thought I was getting the
hang of things then the hurricane hit and it threw things on a
loop.”
Woodruff said she thought the recruitment process would
be over by now and that she would be able to start getting
involved with her sorority at this point in the school year, but
the hurricane delayed sororities’ Bid Day until Sept. 12.
“My rush experience was good until the hurricane,”
Woodruff said. “It prolonged things more than I thought.”
Woodruff, who’s originally from Texas, said she was
better able to handle her academic transition because she
went to a big high school, which prepared her for the type of
environment she’s experiencing now at LSU.
Though the hurricane seemed to spare much of LSU and
the greater Baton Rouge area from damages after veering
toward Livingston Parish in the hours before landfall, areas
such as Grand Isle, Houma and Denham Springs bore the
brunt of Ida’s catastrophic winds and rainfall, with power
being out for weeks and homes being decimated during heat
indexes of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Beyond Louisiana, Hurricane Ida caused flash flooding in
Northeastern states like New York and New Jersey that has
killed at least 44 people as of Sept. 2, according to Reuters,
with flooding ranging from a few inches to multiple feet
throughout the region.
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