Hurricane Ivan Part I: Proof Lindsay is a Goddess

noreply@blogger.com (Road Scholar Sean) — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 02:46:00 +0000

Due to the epic lengths of my blogs and the vast amount I plan for this one, I have split the story into two sections.

So I have been watching the hurricane 5 day projection on the NOAA homepage for the past week and a half because I couldn’t believe it was going to hit Florida again and so shortly after Frances. And while you may all be like woopty doo why bother, I wanted to see if it was going to hit my Aunt and that maybe this one might prove to her that moving to Florida was insane. She’s only been there a year and this is her first Hurricane Season and already she has been hit by two, so I figured I should keep an eye out. Well, everyday the “projected path” moved a half inch or so on the map westward. Hmmm. If it moves a half inch everyday and there’s 7 inches or so between Florida and where I am, how long will it take for it to be a direct hit on us? Well needless to say, it was the perfect amount of time.

But no one talked about it in New Orleans.

My roommate, who is from Mobile, Alabama, a mere two hours from school, kept telling me “oh it’s no big deal, it will probably just swing into Florida once it hits the Gulf, because once it hits the Gulf there is no telling what it will do”. Obviously, she was wrong.

So Monday I went to both my classes like everything was normal, which it supposedly was. No one really mentioned anything in my first class, Drawing, which is a relatively lengthy 3 hour class, until about half way through. That’s when my teacher said, “Oh yeah, keep an eye on the news. If you see that we’re getting a lot of rain in these parts because of the hurricane, don’t bother coming to class on Wednesday because this area tends to flood, and I don’t want to deal with all of that.”

Um, ok. This is where I started to think, hmmm, maybe everyone here is just talking about it behind the students’ backs because none of us on my floor were really worried. No one was saying anything. I went about business as usual, eating lunch, hating the Financial Aide office for their epic laziness etc., and went to my last class. Not even the slightest mention of anything in class about the hurricane, just the average discussion on the life of Harriet Jacobs and a paper assignment. Then I went back to the dorms.

Back at the dorms, my roommate was on the phone with her boyfriend and her friend from down the hall, Drew, was just hanging out. I could hear her asking her boyfriend what’s he going to do if the hurricane comes etc and just generally chatting about it. Drew started to talk to me about how when the rain comes we are so going to have a hurricane party. Oh I was up for that. We started talking about getting rafts and water wings and water balloons. We were going to prep for an epic party in some epic warm rain. Sounded good to me. He told me how if it got real bad Caroline (my roommate) and he were going to go to their friend’s apartment in uptown because it was higher ground than here. (But it is closer to the river, so does anyone want to explain that to me?) Then I was asking how bad did they think it was going to get and that is when I got epic explanation of how the hurricane was probably going to hit closer to Mobile, but because of the way it was spinning we were going to be getting the upside of it or the up spin of it or something and how that was actually worse than getting hit head on because of the winds and rain in that area being stronger. It was some long explanation that involved hand gestures that I think he was making up just for me.

Whatever.

At that point he was like yeah but don’t worry cause it’s not like it’s that strong. My roommate laughed at this point too and was like yeah it’s not that big. That’s when Drew said something like, yeah it’s only like a three or something right? Um, no my friends, it was a 5 at that point. This is when I got a little more concerned.

I began to talk with the other NSE students on my floor about what they were going to do if anything happened. One of my suite mates, who was having a bad UNO day of depression and hating the school, was planning on going to Houston with some friends and was glad for the break. That’s when my other suite mate came back and was like, “Uh yeah the people on the first floor are packing everything up.

Everything.

And my friends at Privateer (the apartment complex on campus, overlooking the hill up to the lake) are packing up and taking everything they can’t fit into their cars up to the third floors apartments.”

Hmm, bad sign? I think so. A friend then called and said at 4 they would announce if classes were going to be canceled. Sweet! No classes and a fat hurricane party planned. But that’s when I started looking at options to get out of there, because I think if everyone else is packing, then my roommate is under-reacting. She was taking a nap during most of this part. So I looked at flights home, flights to Vegas, flights to San Diego, hell I even looked at flights to Hawaii to see Dani.
While I was doing this, more and more people were coming up the stairs talking about leaving. My room is the first room on the floor so I can see the elevator and stair doors and all of a sudden every elevator coming down was full of people and boxes. Crap.

My suite mate and I were exploring all of out options, but the grander our ideas got, the more we realized we didn’t have time to plan anything out, we just had to get out. At 4 they announced our classes were canceled until Friday. So that’s when everyone called their parents. At that exact moment hundreds of kids were making the “Um, Mom, I need some money”, phone call. It was crazy. My suite mate decided on Houston with her roommate and I decided that I had no idea what I wanted to do. I could go to Mississippi to see Ryan, but how the hell would I get there? I could fly home, but when should I go? If I left tomorrow and there was an evacuation suggested, getting to airport could take 5 hours. Our floor was crazy. People were packing like mad. My suite mates emptied their room. Our hurricane advisory notice they handed out said if you think it’s important and you want to guarantee its safety, take it with you. A friend and I talked about taking the bus, but that turned out to be waaaaayyy expensive and didn’t leave till tomorrow. And from what we had heard, if a suggested evacuation was implemented the next day, getting out of the city by vehicle could take 8-10 hours. I think not. So we buddied up with another girl on our hall and her boyfriend. We made the plans to rent a car, I would drive them to Shreveport, LA, and drop them off, and then I would head further up Mississippi to see Ryan. And let me tell you, with an extra $20 a day because none of us were 25, it was expensive.

Right after I made the reservation, my RA came back down the hall posting notice the Dorms were being closed and you had to be out by noon tomorrow. If you wanted to stay tonight you had to come to the night meeting. Finally my roommate decided it was time to think about going somewhere. So this is when I packed. And this is when Lindsay, once again, became my goddess.

I packed all the clothes I didn’t feel like having to replace, my pillows, the majority of my books, and everything electrical. Everything else went in the vacuum bags I had packed with to get here, thanks to Lindsay. I essentially had three huge zip lock baggies to pack the remaining of my clothing and bedding into so that it would stay dry. Genius! Everything got shoved into them, zipped tight, and put on the top shelf of my closet. This was the true test. I had to quickly decide what I honestly could and could not live without. It’s amazing how mush easier it is when you have 30 minutes to do it. Being on the second floor we shouldn’t have too much of a problem with flooding, unless our window breaks, so we figured better safe than sorry because they weren’t going to be boarding up our windows. In only an hour and fifteen minutes, my roommate and I packed everything we wanted to keep to go home with us and everything else into some sort of storage container to go into our closet. Our room was empty. Well, eerily empty because we left our posters up and pictures we knew we could just print again because we didn’t have time to be futzing with those. This is when Monica, the NSE coordinator for Cal Poly called to see how things were going. Um, fine, but I’m just a little busy. It was nice of her to call, especially considering the coordinator at UNO didn’t call any of us. In fact, I got an email from her today literally saying, “I hate to say it, but you’re on your own.” Nice.

At this point, our floor looked like move out day. It was crazy. Oh yeah, just before this is when the one girl and her boyfriend backed out because his mom wouldn’t give him the money. And then the other girl was offered a free ride to Shreveport. I told her to just take it because it would save me driving two hours out of my way. So I ended up paying for a rental car all by my self for the price of a flight home. Shitty. Sorry, but it’s the only word. So my roommate and a friend helped me down the stairs with my stuff to wait for a cab. The elevator was not even going to happen. Being on the second floor you had no chance of catching it. And I know, what’s a flight of stairs, right? Well with the amount of stuff I had, that was an adventure in itself. Down stairs was crazy. It looked like move out day but at hyper speed. It was weird. There were cars lining the street in front of dorm. I waited for my cab to the rental place with my roommate and then off I went.

Kat In The NO

Hurricane Ivan Part I: Proof Lindsay is a Goddess