University of Miami - Ibis Yearbook (Coral Gables, FL)

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PHOTO BY TAHIRA MATHENABIS STAFF Crushed spin The great banyan tree that stood on the University Center Rock collapsed during Hurricane Katrina. This giant has been home to Iron Arrow ceremonies.

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LIFESTYLES HURRICANE KATRINA onpe, tWIce, X'S a HURRI CANE Students see upside to damaging storms: days off school PHOTO BY LAUREN KNIGHTNBIS STAFF Knocked down: Junior Trish Cooper gets in touch with Mother Earth while being floored by the hurricane's damage. PHOTO BY TAHIRA MATHENABIS STAFF Say cheese! A student is photographed in front of the impassable walkway at the Rock. DANIELLA SUAREZHBIS STAFF Hurricane Season 2005 was one for the record books. With the formation of Tropical Storm Zeta, this hurricane season brought the most tropical activity since 185 1. University of Miami students prepared for three hurricane threats this season: Katrina, Rita and Wilma. For many, hurricanes were a first; others have experienced extreme weather in the past. Christopher Hooten is from Kansas City, a region accustomed to extreme weather, particularly tornadoes. He asserts that he is desensitized to hurricanes since they are such an extended process considering that tornadoes appear without much warning. I'm not as afraid of hurricanes as much as respectful of their potential, he added. Though many agree that hurricanes can be scary, they do have their upsides. Kids all get off from school so those of us who study all too often get to have fun dorm parties, Tracy Robinson said. It is the best bonding experience I think. Hurricanes are a good opportunity to get some extra sleep and just relax a little bit, Emily McCollum said. UM students take comfort that the dorms are the safest places to be during a storm. While many Miami residents lost power for days, on-campus students only lost electricity for minutes. Preparations by these students were minimal, consisting of moving furniture and appliances and stopping by the C-Store for last-minute snacks. Everyone stocked up with water, Clark Rinehart observed. And the girls stocked up with chocolate. Off-campus students deal with the hurricane differently. Many were inconvenienced during Hurricane Katrina, with classes lasting until late in the afternoon the day the storm hit. Some even got caught in the infamous Miami traffic in the midst of hurricane-strength winds and pounding rain. Katrina taught everyone a lesson, and for Rita, the University was better prepared and cancelled classes ahead of time. Commuter student Alessandra Giannini jokingly said that Hurricane, snowstorm, tsunami, they're all great ways to get a few days of vacation. I would definitely prefer a snowstormeat least you can build a snowman afterwards or hit passing strangers with snowballs. Yes, hurricanes are a pain, and for many students new to South Florida, they have also been an interesting experience. But the truth is that though hurricanes have downsides, they have proven to be a great time for University of Miami students, especially those living on campus. A couple days off from class, hanging with friends, pigging out, lounging e1 don't know about you, but that sounds like THE life to me.

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Students spend a weekend cleaning up Biloxi following Hurricane Katrinats destructive wrath T.J. EINSTEINXFOR THE IBIS I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Its like a third-world country, I was told. You won't have electricity, running water, a place to sleep. Everything was up in the air, except the Vitals: 41 students, three days to Biloxi, back for Monday classes. We didn't know What to expect. Looking out the windows of the bus, the scene looked like something out of an apocalyptic movie: No one walked the sidewalks and barely any cars were on the streets. Trees still lay across roads and debris and trash lay piled in all directions. An eerie silence covered the streets. It was a ghost town. We arrived at the Salvation Army makeshift headquarters in Biloxi midday Friday, fueled on excitement and candy but very little sleep. After signing our lives away and being equipped with gloves, masks and plenty of hand sanitizere all in an effort to reduce the risk of germs and airborne disease - we made our way to the house we would be cleaning. When Katrina crashed into the shores of Biloxi, it sent a storm surge eight feet tall across the entire city. It didnit just dampen the carpets and curl the pages of the coffee table books-it picked up every possession in every house and held it eight feet above the ground, creating a stew of household possessions that was beat at and stirred by 150 mph winds for two hours. When the water receded, everything dropped back down to the ground to lie wherever it may have landed. The inside of every single home in the city of 60,000 was transformed into, quite literally, a trash dump-u-if the house was still standing, that is. Our job was to clear out the house. Everything had to go. As I approached the house, the smell was the fll'St thing i noticed. At first it was a slightly pungent odor, but that was from the street. The closer I got, the funk of 12-days-rotten food, mold, sewage, mud and decay, which had driven away a group of Marines a day earlier, permeated through my mask and nauseated my every move. Somehow Frank, the owner of the house, had lived on his porch amongst the chaos that was his home for the past 12 days and 12 nights. Looking around at the piles of Frankts 591mg; g9 covering nearly every inch of thw imagine that this was someone'se ome; l ,t Usingshovels, hoes, pitchforks, axes, sledgehammers and especially our gloved hands, we began to clear out the rubble and form a trash mound in front of the house that would eventually become as large as the house itself, it seemed. It took about eight hours to fmish, and we left Frank's house power-cleaned, bleached, dry and empty. It was hard to imagine Frank being able to move back in and live in that house after all it had gone through. It would probably, we would find out later, have to be torn down. Digging through the mess, we were able to salvage a few sentimental items for Frank to keep, the only tangible reminders of a past life before Katrina: a few framed family photos and a wedding album. His sister-in-law, who stopped by the house to pick up the photos for Frank's wife, would tell us through teary eyes that these were the only things that they had left of their children. This alone was enough for us to know we had made a difference in someone's life, regardless of the fate of the house. We repeated this routine in three more houses, finding in one of them the owner's wedding band which had somehow been swept away and lodged underneath the wall. The world needs more young people like you all, said a grateful Biloxi PHOTOS BY T.J. EINSTEINABIS STAFF Broken: Lethan Broughton, 87, a Biloxi resident, tries to hold it together after Katrina.