Danielle Stankard is a freshman at Spring Hill College, the oldest Jesuit society in the South, in Mobile, Alabama. On August 29, she was forced to take refuge from Hurricane Katrina. This Hurricane has already taken many lives. Authorities in New Orleans said Sunday that 59 bodies had been recovered so far, but officials in nearby Jefferson Parish said they had another 100 in their morgue. The final toll was expected to reach into the thousands.
Mirror: What was your personal experience during Hurricane Katrina?
Danielle: I stayed in a shelter with about 70 other students, and we probably had it better than most people in Mobile. We are on a hill, the highest point in the city, so flooding wasn’t too much of a problem, but trees and roofs and other types of debris came down everywhere. The morning of the storm I woke up and it was windy and very rainy. You could hear pieces of the roofing and sheet metal blowing around everywhere and hitting everything outside.
Mirror: Did you have any idea of the destruction that was occurring so close to you?
Danielle: While we were in our shelters and without power, we couldn’t watch TV. We had no idea what was going on outside for three or four days. It was really difficult to see the horrific destruction all of a sudden, knowing that we were fine, while our neighboring cities and downtown of our city were all underwater.
Mirror: What was it like right after the storm?
Danielle: Well, the first day that we went downtown all the streetlights were out (because of the lack of power), and some were ripped right out of the wires, so every light had to be treated as a four-way stop. The rest of the city was ripped apart too, the billboards and signs for car dealerships, Taco Bells and McDonalds all were in some way ripped or just gone altogether.
Mirror: How is the city of Mobile trying to clean up the area?
Danielle: The first thing that I noticed that was being fixed was the billboards, those look better now, and everything else is in the works. Also, they’ve been good about getting power back, and I’d say probably 90 percent of the streetlights are working again.
Mirror: As a college student, how do you think Katrina has affected you?
Danielle: The biggest thing that has affected us right now is gas: there are no gas stations with gas at all down here. This affected our mealtimes: now we can only get meals for an hour in the morning, midday, and in the evening. If we miss that hour, we have to look for food someplace else, but because most of us didn’t fill up on gas before the storm, we can’t go downtown because we’ll get stuck there. Also, we can’t go out past nine, because the city of Mobile is still under a curfew. So, even if we do have gas, we have to get what we need before we get pulled over after nine.
Mirror: The Jesuits believe in aiding the surrounding community. How has Spring Hill College tried to do to help the surrounding areas?
Danielle: Well, the day after the storm we volunteered to help pick up the campus first, such as trash, trees and metal roofing. Our school has also opened up any free rooms we have to students from Loyola College and Tulane College (based in New Orleans) so they can continue to take classes while the city is being fixed up. Many of the students want to volunteer for the Red Cross, but we can’t get to New Orleans or Biloxi because of the gas situation, that is really holding people back from helping.
Mirror: Any hopes or expectations for the future?
Danielle: We’re all wondering if the cities will rebuild soon, given the amount of destruction from the Hurricane. We all hope that the whole situation gets better, and that life gets back to normal soon.
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