Only days after ravaging the southeastern United States, Hurricane Helene made its way through much of Appalachia, including southern Ohio and — more specifically — Portsmouth and the Shawnee State University campus. With streets flooded and rain continuing to come down throughout the weekend beginning Sept. 27, the flooding quickly worsened on campus.
While much of campus, including surrounding streets, experienced heavy flooding, the lower parking lot and on-campus student housing saw the worst of it. Water flowed down to the lower lot, one of the lowest spots on campus, and the drains quickly became clogged and began spewing water right back out. This caused water to quickly rise around the University Townhouse Apartments and flood the basement-level apartments. In all, 39 students were displaced from basement-level housing, and almost 80 students were moved out of their apartments for cleanup and renovations.
The process of moving these students was rather hectic but executed to the best of everyone’s abilities.
“The process of helping students during the aftermath and relocation of students happened late Friday night when we had to figure out where we were moving everyone,” said Olyvia Bittner, an SSU student and resident assistant in student housing. “Overall, it went well. I think there could have been a couple things done better, but overall you could see the strength of the community as we had teams and many others helping to get these students moved and helping get stuff removed from the basement and save as many items as we could. ”
McKenna Roades, an SSU student and resident of the Townhouse Apartments, said she found out about the flooding while she was at her boyfriend’s apartment and the alleyway behind them began to flood. After seeing posts on social media, she realized that her car, parked in the lower lot, might be at risk of flooding. After moving it, she began to help other people in her building, including one of her teammates on SSU’s bowling team.
“By the time we got all of her stuff upstairs, the water was above our knees,” Roades said. “While this was going on, everyone around was helping in other people’s apartments.”
SSU has started an emergency fund and is accepting donations to help students replace lost items such as clothes, laptops and other school supplies. You can donate to the fund at the following link: https://givetossu.com/studentemergencyfund
