Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas on Sept. 14. With it came sheets of rain, powerful winds and flooding that caused many parts of North and South Carolina to be put under mandatory evacuation. Hundreds of thousands of homes were left without power.
Nichole Sanchez, a senior social work major and mother of four, was directly affected by the storm. A tree fell on her rental home, forcing her and her four children from their home on Sept. 14.
Sanchez said that the recovery has been hard, but the Rock Hill and Winthrop communities have been helpful.
“Logistically everything is out finally, we lost items from rain, but it is slow going. I have been given a place on campus that is safe and secure to store my items. The community has been amazing. Rock Hill School District, South Pointe High School’s principal helped put me and my family up in a hotel for a couple of nights,” Sanchez said.
Shelby Anderson, a senior social work major, said that she decided to gather a group of students, including members of Pi Kappa Phi, together to help her classmate in the cleanup of her home.
“Perfect strangers have helped, not knowing who I am or my children. Classmates have stepped up. A classmate’s fraternity stepped up to help move my items out yesterday [Sept. 17],” Sanchez said.
Chloe Gill, a senior psychology major, was part of the group who helped clean out Sanchez’s home.
“When we got there, nothing had really been boxed. She had tons of boxes and a few trash bags. She was very overwhelmed, obviously. She was like, ‘I just have to get everything out of this house.’ We had the boys do all the heavy lifting, and me and Shelby mostly did the tidying. We carefully packed things into boxes. Our main goal was the kitchen, and the boys did the two kids’ bedrooms,” Gill said.
Gill said that the cleanup process took around 4 hours and it ended with loading Sanchez’ belongings into a U-Haul.
Sanchez has created a GoFundMe to raise money for moving costs and replacing items lost during the storm.
An emergency food drive is also taking place on campus. Non-perishable items and toiletries are being requested. Items donated will go to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina in Charlotte.
Wanda Koszewski, the human nutrition department chair, is the contact for the food bank. She said that the food bank reached out to her, asking for help.
“They contacted me last week and noted in their email that because of Hurricane Florence coming, they had shipped a lot of their supplies to the eastern side of the state to help those families quickly. They were helping the other food bank network up there in North Carolina. Also, this is the time of year that people don’t give. We always are good around holidays, but we’re not so good during the rest of the year, and so their supplies are very low,” Koszweski said.
The drive is done with the support of the Student Dietetic Association, or SDA. Though Koszewski said that the drive is really a campus-wide effort.
Victoria Schwark, president of SDA, said she that got Sodexo, Winthrop’s dining services’ provider, to donate water to the drive. Koszweski said that Winthrop’s willingness to help those in need makes this campus unique.
“They [Winthrop] have responded every time we have asked them. They have asked us for help, and we reached out to the Winthrop community for help. They have always responded,” Koszweski said.
