By Mary O’KEEFE

With the recent hurricanes, fires, earthquakes and tragic shooting in Las Vegas, the thought of emergency preparedness has been brought to the forefront of many. This is especially pertinent to those who have children in college, close by and out-of-state.

As Hurricane Irma’s path seemed certain it would land on Florida, La Crescenta residents Cheryl and Mark Davis knew they had to get their daughter Katie, who was attending the University of Miami, home. It took patience as the parents worked out the logistics of getting their daughter out of a state where everyone was being evacuated while having a credit card that could handle a surprising jump in airline costs.

“The University of Miami was awesome,” said Cheryl. The university closed a day before most were ordered to evacuate, providing more time for students to make it to safety.

“That’s the only way I got her out,” Cheryl said. “The day she called I booked a flight. The airfare was crazy.”

At first, Katie wanted to go to Baltimore, Maryland where it would be easier to get back to school when the evacuation was lifted.

“That was $1,600 – one way. To get her back to LA was $900 one way,” said Cheryl. “That was before they capped the airfares.”

Normally the round trip ticket is about $400.

What made it more difficult was getting the ticket itself. Several times while on the Internet, Cheryl would find the flight she wanted, click on the ticket icon and a notice would pop up saying the flight was canceled. As she continued to look for flights, the prices continued to rise. She was finally able to get a ticket for the Thursday before the hurricane made landfall.

After she purchased the ticket, the airlines capped flights to $99. She has applied for a refund but does not hold out hope.

“Initially they told me I would have had to change the reservation to the [capped price],” she said.

She knew that was going to be difficult because of the trouble she had getting the flight in the first place. If she had released her higher priced ticket she was not certain she could get a flight for Katie at all.

All of this added to the stress of getting her daughter out of Florida before catastrophe struck.

“Katie was very concerned because they had started canceling flights early [on the day she was to leave],” Cheryl said.

And Katie’s friends had already left, leaving her alone at the college.

“She did a great job. She put everything in plastic and put it in the bathroom to protect it. She moved everything away from the windows,” Cheryl said.

Katie’s flight was on Thursday morning, Sept. 7. She was at the airport five hours prior to take off and still barely made it out because it was so busy and chaotic at the airport. Later that day, after she was on her way to LA, the remaining flights were canceled.

“Katie had a friend who was going to fly to Connecticut but it was $1,500 one way, so she came to stay with us,” Cheryl said.

Another friend from India also joined the Davises while the school remained closed.

“The other thing the university did was to run shuttles every hour to airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale,” Cheryl said. “They also ran shuttles to [local stores] so the students who stayed could buy supplies. They got the kids to shelters. Seventeen percent of the student body is international, so they couldn’t leave [the campus].”

The school was closed for three weeks, during which time parent weekend was scheduled.

“This was the second year in a row that parent weekend was canceled due to a hurricane,” Cheryl said.

Cheryl and Mark already had tickets to attend the weekend event in Florida and decided to go anyway to help Katie set up her dorm. So three weeks later they traveled to Florida and saw up close what Hurricane Irma, which was rated a Category 4 when it finally reached the state, had done.

“Just driving down the street you would see trees down on both sides of the road. We went to Coconut Grove and saw boats that had been picked up out of the marina and plopped up against a tree,” she said.

The Hurricane Irma adventure was frightening, but Cheryl and Mark say they are proud of how their daughter handled the evacuation and are happy with how the school worked with families and students.

“I am happy with the university because they closed early and I was really happy and grateful we could afford to fly Katie out,” Cheryl said. “I think the university did a great job and a wonderful job on the clean- up of the campus.”

There was only minor damage to some of the dorms and to a lot of trees that fell around the school.

The university also kept information coming, from the evacuation to the recovery, on social media so Cheryl and Mark could keep track of everything that was happening on campus.

“I felt [the university] was doing a great job taking care of our kids, which is really important when you are 2,700 miles away,” she said.

For parents, it is important to know the emergency plans that are in place for the college or university their student is attending.

“The first thing we try to encourage is to have the student sign up for the university or college’s notification system,” said Corporal Neil Carthew, police officer with Glendale Community College.

He said most colleges have a mass notification system that offers text or voice dial [phone call] communication for students and parents. This is usually offered during the school’s orientation.

For GCC parents and students, visit https://www.glendale.edu/about-gcc/college-police/emergency-notifications and sign up for emergency notifications.

Carthew also said at GCC, as at many other schools, students and staff can be notified of an emergency with a reverse call system that can be broadcast throughout the classrooms and campus via the campus phones.

These methods of communication have been used in active shooter situations at several universities, advising students and staff to remain in specific areas as police respond to the emergency.

In the event of a major earthquake in California, notices to students and parents will provide information on damage to the campus and safe areas where they can gather. Carthew added that most colleges, including GCC, have emergency preparedness information on their websites that include videos the schools have produced themselves and in the case of GCC there are videos from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and Homeland Security.

When a young adult goes off to college, parents want to give them freedom despite concern that never fades for their safety.

“We encourage parents to call if there are any questions about the procedures put in place on campus,” Carthew said.

The important thing to remember, he added, is emergency preparedness is always evolving as disasters occur and officers learn from those events.

  Mary Okeefe