After an unusually quiet August in the middle of hurricane season, two named storms swept across the U.S. in September. From Puerto Rico to Florida, colleges and universities had to pivot and prepare as Hurricanes Fiona and Ian barreled toward them over tropical waters.
The University of Puerto Rico’s (UPR) west coast campuses flooded on September 18 when Fiona’s eye passed over Punta Tocon. Power outages left more than one million in the dark and continue to plague the island, but university officials said the impact is nowhere near Hurricane Maria in 2017, which caused roughly 3,000 casualties and almost $90 billion in damage. UPR students were able to return to their campuses last week.
Just ten days after Fiona, powerful Hurricane Ian ripped across Florida, decimating both its coastlines in a slow crawl. At least 117 people lost their lives in the storm, and damage estimates start at $53 billion.
Dr. Lawrence Drake II, interim president of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
These universities serve student bodies that are majority minoritized populations. While university officials praised weather prediction models that allowed their students, faculty and staff ample time to prepare, they are worried about the increasingly violent and less predictable nature of hurricanes as climate change continues to impact the globe.
“Our student profile is one where they’re not financially wealthy, they’re not generally able to pivot very quickly in the face of dealing with something as adverse as this weather pattern,” said Drake. “We needed to give them time to get home.”
B-CU students were ordered to evacuate four days before the storm hit. By Tuesday afternoon, the campus was locked down. While the storm raged, the campus lost power and internet, and many faculty and staff homes were flooded. About 65% of B-CU’s student body comes from Florida. In Daytona Beach and cities along Ian’s path, students, faculty and staff watched neighbors’ homes sink beneath the water. Drake said it was “traumatic.”
