Courtesy of City of St. Petersburg
By Aubrey Carr
In the wake of Hurricane Ian, the USF community is working together to provide aid to those impacted.
On Sept. 26, the storm was predicted to hit Tampa Bay as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing wind speeds up to 125 mph, but at the very last minute, it shifted paths to the southwest coast.
The hurricane made landfall on Sept. 28 near Fort Myers and Cape Coral, bringing sustained winds up to 150 mph and leaving over 2 million Floridians without power.
Ahead of the hurricane, USF closed all three campuses and canceled classes from Monday, Sept. 26 until Monday, Oct. 3.
Soon after, USF St. Petersburg enacted a mandatory evacuation, forcing over 900 student residents to leave campus.
This was the first time the campus was evacuated since 2017’s Hurricane Irma.
“We tracked the residential students very carefully while preparing for the storm to ensure they had a safe place to be,” Carrie O’Brien, director of communications and marketing for the St. Petersburg campus, told The Crow’s Nest.
“In fact, the USF St. Petersburg campus leadership team adopted ‘hurricane buddies,’ a group of about 35 students who didn’t have firm plans for evacuation as of the Monday evening before the storm. Team members called and texted the students to make sure they had accommodations and to answer any questions they had.”
The university provided transportation to the Tampa campus for students without a place to go, as well as housing for the duration of the evacuation order.
According to O’Brien, 10 students were evacuated to Tampa. Eight of those students were housed in the campus’ residence halls, while the other two had alternative housing plans once they arrived on campus.
No students have reached out to USF St. Petersburg’s Housing and Residential Education office for accommodations, according to O’Brien.
Although Tampa Bay missed the brunt of the storm, many of the state’s southwest residents were met with devastation from the hurricane-force winds and storm surges.
In response to the aftermath, USF partnered with Hillsborough County and the Florida Department of Health (FDH) to activate the university’s Community Urgency Response Team (CERT).
The team, comprised of 53 student volunteers trained in basic disaster management and health skills, worked nearly 1,000 hours setting up and managing over 16 community shelters.
Additionally, the FDH deployed the USF Medical Response Unit’s Specialized Disaster Response Team to provide aid to the largest special needs shelter in the county.
“Our team represented the largest contribution of licensed medical providers at the shelter and our responders actively cared for hundreds of patients 24 hours a day,” Austin Jared, the Medical Response Unit operations coordinator, said in a press release.
“We performed interventions ranging from suctioning of airways, administration of thousands of liters of oxygen, vitals and glucose monitoring and assisting patients with medications.”
USF’s Medical Response Unit is comprised of students who double as certified paramedics, EMTs and emergency medical responders. Throughout the storm and the aftermath, the unit dedicated over 700 hours of medical care.
For students in need of resources:
- Dean of Students’ student concern form
- COMPASS Student Success Advocates
- USF St. Petersburg Wellness Center
- Student Outreach Services
Donate to help support USF students and faculty impacted by Hurricane Ian:
