As Hurricane Helene struck Florida on September 26th, two Aspen High School former students and Tampa residents had fascinating experiences as they faced the challenges brought by the powerful Category 4 hurricane passing right through Tampa.
Eric Pearce, a former sophomore and current senior golfer at IMG Academy, described his fear when seeing Hurricane Helene on the news.
“I go to IMG, which is right on the water. It was definitely scary. The hurricane disrupted our normal routines with academics and athletics,” Pearce said.
IMG Academy is located 45 minutes outside Tampa Bay and canceled classes and instructed students to evacuate. Pearce and his family decided to travel to Miami, which was outside of the storm’s path, but the evacuation process was challenging.
“It usually takes about four hours to drive to Miami, but it took us seven. We left on Monday, two days before the storm, because gas stations were running out of gas,” Pearce said.
According to CNN, nearly 30% of Florida gas stations were without fuel, with 77.5% of the shortages reported in the Tampa Area.
Hurricane Helene caused significant damage at IMG Academy. A part of the room in the basketball gym collapsed. While the school works to repair the facilities, students are taking their classes online.
“We’ve already had two weeks off and are expected to miss another two weeks because of the damage, but they’re still not entirely sure. For now, I only have optional golf practices” Pearce said.
Since weeks of school have been lost, IMG is expected to take away days from Thanksgiving break to make up classes. In addition to Pearce’s struggles, Juliet Jansen has had similar issues. Jansen lived in Aspen for the majority of her life and attended her freshman year of high school at AHS in 2022-23. She is now in eleventh grade and lives in Tampa Bay with her family. Her family did not evacuate when the first storm warnings came out. However, they decided to leave after the conditions worsened.
“We didn’t react much because previous hurricanes had died down before hitting, but once we saw it was going to hit Tampa hard, we evacuated to Tallahassee to stay with my brother,” Jansen said.
Before leaving, Jansen’s family gathered all their belongings off the ground floor of their house and put them upstairs to avoid flooding. The storm caused excessive flooding in many areas and homes in Tampa, so their decisions proved to be wise. As Tampa recovers from Hurricane Helene, Pearce and Jansen are working their way back to normal routines after disrupted weeks.