en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:16:30 GMT 15 By Maddie Bensinger

After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, America thought it was done seeing tragedies of that sort for awhile. However, on Sept. 15, Hurricane Ike hit Texas and Arkansas and brought back the horrid memories of three years past. While Ike didn’t hit Kent nearly as hard as it hit the south, its effects were definitely still seen and felt by the majority of the city. Most of the effects felt in Kent were intense winds as opposed to the rain and thunderstorms that some other areas of the country received. On the night of Sept 14, the windstorm began to hit Ohio, and in Portage County, the winds reached 78 miles per hour, knocking power out all across Kent and its surrounding cities. A total of around two million homes lost power in Ohio. “My power was out for three days. We had to go to the laundromat to do laundry and we used all of their plugs to charge all of our phones and stuff,” junior Kelsey Long said. Some people had their power out for just a few hours, while others did not get power back for several days. “My power was out for seven days. We had water, but it was freezing,” junior Bethany Stanley said. This was not the case for anyone who has well water, as their water was completely out. Anyone who lives in Twin Lakes or Franklin Township has well-water and since it is run on electricity, their water was out for just as long as their power. Stanton and a few of the elementary schools in Kent have generators, but Roosevelt does not, causing the high school to have a day off of school until the power came back on. This frustrated many of the staff members because it set their classes behind in their schedules. “My classes were behind in their schedules and that was annoying, but we got back on track and are all caught up now,” science teacher Dave Killius said. As of now, the power and water is all back on around Kent and the people in the area are hopefully remembering to never take a simple gift like electricity for granted. On a more national scale, Hurricane Ike definitely hit Texas and Arkansas harder than anyone expected. Perhaps the area that was affected the most was the city of Galveston, TX. The storm hit Galveston with winds of 110 miles per hour, and flooded more than 100,000 homes. Ike caused 7.8 million people to lose power and disrupted 40 drinking-water and wastewater-treatment facilities. About 40% of the town of Galveston decided to stay during the hurricane, but were urged to take shelter in a local high school. By Friday night, Sept 12, downtown Galveston was covered in four feet of water. About 1.2 million people were evacuated from coastal areas of Texas and Arkansas. The Red Cross, FEMA, and other organizations are still working to try to help areas where people are still mourning from the wrath of Hurricane Ike. ]]> Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:06:00 GMT