While Tropical Storm Hanna hit the Wilmington area with minimal force last weekend, precautions were taken to ensure the safety of the students.

A voluntary evacuation was enacted, along with the cancellation of all Friday classes, events and activities.

“The information we have from the resident assistants indicated that 1,577 of our resident students, out of 3,650 total on-campus students, chose to leave Wilmington prior to Hanna reaching us,” Director of Housing and Residence Life Brad Reid said.

He added, “This represents 43.2 percent of our resident students. Conversely, 2,073, or 56.8 percent, decided to remain on-campus in their residential space.”

According to Reid and Suzanne Blake, Emergency Management Coordinator of the Environmental Health and Safety Department, the damage assessment from Hanna was minor.

“Damages were limited to debris removal such as pine straw and tree limbs and recurrence of roof leaks in a few buildings throughout the campus,” Blake said.

Reid added, “We had two suites in the University Suites incur some water leaks around their windows and three rooms in Galloway take on small amounts of water.”

However, carpet cleaning companies were not needed for the five occurrences of water leaks, and facility checks were performed to see how building exteriors held up.

“The campus lost power for a little over an hour during the early morning hours of Saturday,” Blake said. “This was cause for concern but it came back on relatively quickly so no damage occurred from the power outage.”

Campus was able to reopen at noon on Saturday.

According to Blake, UNCW has only had two voluntary evacuations in the past 10 years, once during Hurricane Isabel, and once during Tropical Storm Hanna. She estimates that there have been close to five mandatory evacuations over the same time period.

“North Carolina as a state has the second highest rate of occurrence of hurricanes in the U.S. and has one of the highest incidents of natural disasters of all of the United States in general,” Blake said. “Because of the frequency with which hurricanes affect North Carolina, we do have a higher incidence of evacuating the campus because of a hurricane.”

During a voluntary evacuation, classes are cancelled and attendance policies are revoked while students have the option to leave campus if they are being urged by parents or feel unsafe. They can, however, choose to stay on campus in residence halls.

“During Ophelia, also a voluntary evacuation, approximately 20 percent remained on campus,” Blake said. “It really depends on the storm, but I think now that we have an increased number of residential students, more are choosing to stay during a voluntary evacuation.”

If a mandatory evacuation is enacted, everyone must leave campus and the University Police will enforce access restrictions. Students are not allowed back into residence halls during this time.

According to Blake, this process usually occurs concurrently with a university closing order.

“In this situation, UNCW police will block the entrances of campus and no students, faculty or staff may enter, unless designated as emergency personnel,” Blake said. “In many ways, it is much easier to manage a mandatory evacuation since we do not have to provide services that students need as opposed to if they do stay on campus.”

Storms that have affected UNCW the most over the past years include Category 3 Hurricane Fran in 1996, Category 2 Hurricane Diana in 1984 and Category 4 Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

“We have been monitoring Ike very closely over the past few weeks and now the forecast track has it heading into the Gulf of Mexico,” Blake said. “We are not worried about Ike, but we always keep a close watch on the Atlantic in case any other storms form.”

Blake assures UNCW that it is not unusual that we are experiencing tropical storms this fall.

“Globally we are in a period of higher tropical cyclone occurrence in general and right now we are in line with the predictions for this year,” she said.