HURRICANE FLORENCE IS COMING… and Now She’s Gone
The last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind (no pun intended) and the main reason for that is the threat of Hurricane Florence. There were many stages that I went through from the announcement of the hurricane all the way through to the passing of the storm and not everything that happened was what I expected.
As per the news, Hurricane Florence as a Category 4 hurricane was approaching the East Coast of the United States, hitting on Thursday (13th September) night and causing wind and storms until Sunday. The predictions suggested that it would hit at Wilmington and travel inland towards Raleigh and head north into Virginia. There was also talk about the storm surge reaching 20 feet and that Raleigh was going to flood due to the massive amounts of rain.
From my point of view, it was very scary as firstly I had never experienced a hurricane before and secondly it was becoming increasingly difficult to get supplies as by Thursday there was no bottled water in Wake County. As I can’t drive, getting large amounts of dry goods and bottled water was difficult in itself, the fact that people were panic buying everything in sight made it so much harder.
At the Lab my colleagues were telling me to fill my bath with water so that I could fill the back of the toilet and flush it if we lose power, which apparently was likely to happen. Also, I found out that you can add six drops of bleach to 1 gallon of water and let it sit for 30 minutes and it is drinkable. They also said there was the possibility of tornadoes so at that point I was like ‘Just let the hurricane sweep me away!’. Fortunately, one of my very kind housemates picked up 3 crates of water and some dry snacks for me so at least that situation was handled.
I found a tracker for the storm, I opened all the relevant information on the North Carolina public protection website and I was told not to come into work for the rest of the week… This was on Tuesday. I now thought this was going to be a great time, 5 days to lay in bed and work from home… that wasn’t the case at all. My grandparents called me every day from Wednesday to Sunday which was a blessing because 2 of my housemates went home for the storm and the other one never leaves her room. I didn’t have anything to talk about, but it was nice of them to spend some time. I also spoke to my mum and friends from home at various points. But mostly I napped and watched Netflix (not as productive as I had hoped)
By day two I was bored and by day four I was insane. NCSU sent an email saying that I didn’t have to go to work on the Monday either but at this point I was going in whether the buses were running or not. I would walk the hour to work if I had to. Fortunately, there was a reduced but present bus system and I wasn’t the only one to turn up. A lot of people asked me how I got on and laughed at my response.
The storm itself was at sea, a category 4, hit the coast as a category 1 and reached Raleigh as a Tropical storm. We got a lot of wind and a lot of rain. What I didn’t realise is that I am looking into a courtyard in the centre of my complex so, I couldn’t even see the worst of the storm. Here I was thinking it was the same weather I would walk to school in back in the UK when in actual fact trees were blown over along my street. All about perspective I suppose. I also haven’t seen any flooding but, I know that many areas did flood and I can’t even pretend to know about the damage at the coast (fortunately I was far enough in land for the storm surge and consequent flooding to not be a problem)
Overall, I learned that the media blows things out of proportion and my mum was more worried than I was about the hurricane. I learned that students in Raleigh are super chill when it comes to natural disasters as I heard two hurricane parties and finally my window leaks when it rains heavily. Found that out the hard way. I mean maintenance will respond eventually right?
