Tropical Storm Hanna hit the Georgetown campus late Saturday morning, bringing strong winds and rain and causing damage to student residences.
Around noon on Saturday water began seep into Scott Chessare’s (COL ‘09) Village A apartment. With water spilling from the walls onto both the upstairs and downstairs floors. Chessare panicked and called Facilities. He and his roommates continued to call both Facilities and the Department of Public Safety until Facilities employees arrived three hours later. The employees had no wet vacuums or other items to help clean up. Surveying the apartment, they said there was little help they could offer, but that they could bring a few towels to clean up. They left, promising to come back later with the towels.
Around 6:30 p.m. Facilities returned with a few towels.
According to University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille, Georgetown’s Facilities Department had been preparing for the storm all week.
“The emergency team was certainly aware of pending weather forecasts, monitored the situation, and took appropriate precautions in order to be prepared to respond to any impact,” Bataille said.
In preparation for the storm, Facilities upped personnel Saturday to more than thirty people on duty to respond to emergency calls, as they were expecting an increase in demand due to the storm. Staff also secured additional items needed for storm response such as sandbags, pumps, wet vacs, plastic sheeting, and tarps.
The administration said that Tropical Storm Hanna had very little impact on the campus, though Vice President for Facilities and Housing Karen Frank did admit that her staff received many calls regarding flooding.
Bataille wrote in an email that, due to the low impact of the storm on the campus extra personnel were allowed to go home at about 6:00 p.m.
Kaitlin Donohue (COL ‘10) was satisfied with Facilities’ response. Donohue woke Saturday morning to find her first floor kitchen covered in about an inch of water. The water drain outside the door was broken, causing water to pool outside the door, with no place to go but inside the townhouse. Donohue called Facilities for help, and about ten minutes later, an employee arrived and used a wet vac to clean water off the kitchen floor and suction water from the drain.
“[Facilities] did a really good job and cleaned it up pretty quickly,” Donohue said. “Looking back it could have been a lot worse.”
Tropical Storm Hanna only caused flooding problems for Georgetown and American University, though George Washington University’s Mt. Vernon campus was not as lucky.
At around 5:00 p.m. on Saturday the Mt. Vernon campus’ dining hall, athletic complex, gymnasium, library, and two of the dormitories experienced power outages. While the library and dormitories had power restored in short time with use of a generator, the other buildings had to endure long hours without electricity.
