In March 2019, Benjamin Newton, the sustainability director at Central Community College (CCC) in Grand Island, Nebraska, watched what meteorologists called a bomb cyclone. First came a snow storm that froze the land, then heavy rains that brought on intense flooding, and lastly heat.
“They say here in the Midwest you can experience all three seasons in one day. Well, that's what happened that month,” said Newton. “When the weather warmed up after the storm, all the rivers were still frozen, but the ice started breaking up. Our rivers moved with one-ton ice chunks. It was like seeing a bunch of one-ton pick-up trucks floating down the river. That caused our worst flooding in 50 years.” 
Dr. Alexei Trundle, research fellow in sustainable urban development at the University of Melbourne
CCC is a rural community college with three campuses in Grand Island, Columbus, and Hastings. It serves students in 25 counties. In March 2019, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared 24 of those 25 counties national emergency areas. About 70% of CCC students also live below the national poverty level, and the population includes immigrants from more than 50 countries. Several vulnerabilities in the CCC community compounded that month.
A few years before the bomb cyclone, Newton had started climate resilience workshops at CCC on what to do in an extreme weather event. The devastation in March 2019 was severe.
“In rural communities, we have a lack of first-responders that are trained, so preparing for natural disasters is crucial,” said Newton. “For example, I live in Grand Island, a city of 53,000 people, and within our whole county, there are two people that work for emergency management. So, we rely a lot on volunteers that get trained.”
Yet Newton said it could have been much worse if CCC hadn’t already been preparing not only its campus community but its neighbors.
“I offered it here on campus for the emergency management director to train our students, our staff, and anybody in the community on what to do if there’s a flood or a fire,” said Newton.
