By Jessica Lewis, News Editor
Campus was flooded, left without power and the landscape torn apart by 75-mile per hour winds as a storm traveled up the east coast on Long Island Friday, March 12. Several students are still dealing with the repercussions of the storm, as their windows leaked and belongings were water damaged. In some cases, their cars were struck by fallen trees.
As the storm carried into Saturday, the men's lacrosse team had a 14-minute delay in the first quarter of their game against Johns Hopkins University, due to power failure. "There have been about 257,000 service interruptions to customers [of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA)]," said LIPA spokesperson Mark Gross. "This is one of the worst storms we have seen since 1992."
In Alliance Residence Hall on Saturday afternoon, "the wind blew the sliding doors open and shattered the glass in one [of the doors] and blew out a ceiling tile inside…then the fire alarm went off twice," the Resident Safety Representative Matt Spirko said. "We saw wind gusts up to 75-miles per hour on some parts of Long Island," Gross said.
Also in Alliance Residence Hall, the Chronicle's graphic designer Mary Ashlyn Moore woke to the Fire Department knocking on her door. "They took out a chunk of my wall and ceiling to try and find the pipe it was leaking from then they patched it all up and mopped and cleaned," Moore said. Her room leaked throughout the day, and upon returning in the evening, "there was standing water from wall to wall." She responded by calling Public Safety, but no one came, Moore said. On Tuesday, when she went back to her room after classes at 2:30 p.m. she found a yellow note saying that they had been there.
As the heavy rain and winds steadily continued throughout the day, the Netherlands residence complex experienced a power outage that caused students to have to leave their rooms.
Due to the storm, Hofstra Concerts was forced to cancel their scheduled show that night featuring Wale, projected to start at 8 p.m. "When we first found out that morning [Saturday] that Wale's flight from Miami to JFK was cancelled, both his team and Hofstra Concerts immediately began looking into alternative flights," said Hofstra Concerts president Brian Shoicket. "We were trying to accommodate as much as possible to still have the concert."
"On Saturday night, there was a lot of rain and wind, you know we have all seen this before. Then the power goes out at 8:30 p.m.," said Freshman Jimmy Sia, "then the Resident Assistants started banging on our doors and herded us all into the [Netherlands] Core like cattle and told us to sleep there. I went to a hotel with seven other people."
Though the storm has subsided, students are still cleaning up the mess it made. "This past weekend was the fifth time and worst time my room has leaked…It's a shame that the University hasn't done anything about the leakage problem…" said sophomore and Constitution Hall resident Lizz Conway.
"This was not the first time that my room has leaked and also not the first time that nothing was done about it," said sophomore Nick Carrara, "the only thing that was done to try and help this problem was to put my room number on a list that was already pretty long and I haven't heard from any university offices as of yet."
"We relay that information [calls from students] to different parts of the Plant Department, depending on what it was reported," said John O'Malley, the Director of Public Safety. After multiple calls, the Plant Department could not be reached for comment in time for publication.
A tree falls on a car on the South Campus following a major storm that wreaked havoc on east coast over the weekend of Friday, March 12. The campus was flooded and certain sections were left without power, forcing students to seek temporary housing elsewhere. (Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Roth)