Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana's coast Monday morning making some Penn Staters with Louisiana ties anxious as they await the outcome of the storm just three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the New Orleans region.
Jarrod Williams (junior-sociology and biology), of Lafayette, La., said members of his immediate family live in the area and were still at home Sunday.
Williams said he has made many attempts to contact his family there, but lines are jammed and they haven't responded recently.
"If they could just send me a text, [it] would be comforting to say the least," he said.
The levees surrounding New Orleans continued to hold as of 7 p.m. Monday, though water flowed over the Industrial Canal's floodwall. Homes suffered structural damage, trees fell, water covered roads and more than a million homes were without power, The Associated Press reported.
The levees, only partially rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, are expected to stand, city officials told the AP.
Christian Brady, Dean of Schreyer Honors College and previous director of the Honors Program at Tulane University in New Orleans, said Tulane flooded when Katrina hit the city in 2005.
Brady said classes were canceled for the fall semester and other schools, including Penn State, took in displaced students.
It will take time to figure out how to best aid the region, he said.
If students want to immediately contribute, they can give to relief organizations such as the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity or religious charities, he said.
"It looks as if the primary concern is going to be property damage," he said.
Brady said he will be in touch with his colleagues at Tulane as the damage is assessed.
Kwamé Floyd, Class of 2007, is a fourth-grade math teacher at Langston Hughes Academy Charter School in New Orleans.
Floyd, who was on the men's track team and president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council while at Penn State, is currently in the Houston area after a mandatory evacuation of coastal Louisiana was issued.
He said his concern is whether the levees will hold.
"I think that people will kind of give up on New Orleans permanently if those levees don't hold up," Floyd said.
