Courtesy of Annalise Anderson | The Crow’s Nest
By Sean Schrader
Looking on Twitter the other day, I saw the experience of a hurricane summed up into three stages: the anxiety as the storm approaches, the fear as the storm is hitting and the realization of the damage the storm’s caused. As a life-long Floridian, I can attest to this summary being accurate.
Hurricanes are nothing to fool around with.
Here in Tampa Bay, we have been incredibly fortunate to not experience a direct hit from a major hurricane in a long time. But our good fortune means someone else’s misfortune, and that’s been true with several major hurricanes over the past few years such as Irma, Michael and now Ian.
Whether you evacuated your home, bought hurricane supplies or had to complete some of your work virtually, we were all impacted by Hurricane Ian in one way or another.
Before this storm, I always thought the planning for events like this was done easily and quickly. But experiencing Hurricane Ian at USF has given me a greater appreciation for the work done by emergency operations officials throughout our community.
Until closer to landfall, much of USF and the greater Tampa Bay area was in the cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Ian, meaning that catastrophic storm surge, damaging winds and torrential rain was headed right for the place we call home.
Making decisions regarding cancelling classes, student events and finding housing options for those in need of shelter was not easy, but necessary to ensure everyone remained safe.
For students on-campus who couldn’t evacuate, the USF Housing Department was able to bring everyone together on the Tampa campus to ride out the storm in a safe location. During the storm, the USF Police Department was able to patrol the campuses to ensure everything remained guarded and protected. And because of the USF Facilities Operations Team, students were able to make a quick reentry back to their dorms.
A lot goes into emergency response planning, but because of the leadership of USF’s Emergency Operations Team, President Rhea Law, Chancellor Christian Hardigree and Karen Holbrook, it made it so that students were able to remain safe during the storm and operations personnel were ready to get the campus back in working order once the threat had passed.
When any storm is approaching, there’s always that sense of panic that slowly starts to set in as the it gets closer and the predicted track gets tighter.
In times of panic, important decisions must be made expeditiously and because of the work of the university’s leadership team, the USF community was able to emerge from this crisis.
