Nearly two thousand miles usually distances UF from Texas, but the distance vanished this week.
After Category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall Friday, displacing about 30,000 and killing at least 13 people, members of the UF community began reaching out.
The natural phenomenon, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm, broke the record for the most extreme rainfall on U.S. mainland — nearly 52 inches of water, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The storm victims include 27 UF online students — eight located in the counties declared as federal disaster areas — and potentially 500 UF students who call Texas home, according to a university news release.
UF President Kent Fuchs urged the community to donate money to the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army in the release. Fuchs has been working on the logistics for a couple days with the alumni association, the athletic department and the university to see what each could do, said UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes.
“We think that’s the best way, to go through those agencies, rather than us sending supplies or reaching out through some other way,” Fuchs said.
Benjamin Abo, an EMS physician at the UF Department of Emergency Medicine, said he traveled to Texas to join a Federal Emergency Management Administration search and rescue mission thanks to UF Health Shands.
“This is a federal deployment from FEMA into the disaster zone to search and rescue people and pets,” Abo wrote in an email statement.
The University Athletic Association also offered their resources and support.
Florida basketball coach Mike White replied to a tweet from the University of Houston basketball coach agreeing to send 10 shoes and 20 shirts. White and his staff prepared a package Tuesday morning, said Denver Parler, the UAA associate director of communication.
Other teams, including football and softball, are also planning to send apparel leftover from their summer camps to Texas, Parler said.
“We want to do the right thing and hopefully encourage the Gator Nation to chip in,” Parler said.
Rabbi Berl Goldman of the Lubavitch Chabad Jewish Center said his organization started gathering supplies to send to Texas after hearing from Chabad centers in Houston on Tuesday morning.
The local Chabad will send truckloads of nonperishable foods to the flooding zones with other Florida Chabads, Goldman said.
“Our prayers and good thoughts are with the people of Texas,” Goldman said.
Melanie Wunsch, a UF aerospace engineering senior, lives in Orlando but grew up in Atascocita, a few miles outside the Texas state capital. The 21-year-old said when she saw Houston underwater on the news, she knew she had to help.
Since Wunsch plans to drive to Dallas on Sept. 5 to start an internship with Southwest Airlines, she decided to gather as many supplies as possible and drop them off herself.
Although she’s accepting any donations, she’s most concerned about collecting feminine products and children’s clothing, she said.
“There’s going to be people in need from now until the next few years, so the fact that I can actually help out makes me really happy,” Wunsch said.
Jireh Davis, a UF African American studies and political science junior, put out a call to collect supplies. Davis, the creator of T.I.E., a community organization bringing together locals, police and UF students, said she wanted to create a difference.
Her hometown, Arlington, is only three hours away from the flooded city. The 20-year-old hopes to ship everything into the city or send it to her mom to drive down.
“I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but I’m going to get it there some way, somehow,” she said.
Davis said she’s still figuring out logistics, but expects to have boxes for any donations, but especially toiletries, food and money, out on Turlington Plaza.
“That’s the biggest and the best way to help,” she said. “It’s just to donate.”
@taveljimena
jtavel@alligator.org
