Post Students Affected by Snowstorm

Mimmi Montgomery
Staff Writer

Nemo is no longer solely Pixar’s cute animated clown fish; since last weekend, residents of the Northeast, who named the storm Nemo, will remember it as a blizzard that caused traffic chaos on snowy roads, leaving many snowed into their houses without power. But compared to October’s Hurricane Sandy, this second storm to hit Long Island in just four months was not as dramatic according to Post stu­dents.

On Friday, February 8, it started snowing heavily in the New York area, and LIU Post notified students that the school would close for at least two days, since the snow storm was ex­pected to bring strong winds and more than five inches of snow. The weather conditions imposed great danger on the roads, and people were advised to stay inside and avoid driving. With Hur­ricane Sandy in recent memory, some students were quick to leave campus on Thursday before the snow began when they were noti­fied of the upcoming storm.

Resident student Talia Charlton, a junior Journalism major, went back home to Man­hattan as soon as she heard of the approaching weather. “All I could think of was the two-week-long power outage that our school suffered during Sandy,” she said. “Therefore, I went home straight after class on Thursday, not to risk getting stuck on campus without power.”

Students who did stay on campus say they experienced both negative and positive conse­quences of the blizzard. Waking up to an all-white landscape of ten inches of snow on a Saturday was one positive. “It was a lot of fun to run out and play in the snow,” said Johanna Pettersson, a sophomore Psychology major. According to Pettersson, the biggest problem was getting to and from campus. “My brother was visiting from Sweden and we were going to Manhattan during the weekend. It took us four hours to get to the city by bus and train.”

Closer to the city, the effects of the blizzard were far less signif­icant compared to the conditions on Long Island. Bianca Rahimza­deh, a junior Public Relations student who commutes from Brooklyn, said, “Of course there was a lot of snow, but streets were clean in no time, and I could take the subway everywhere even though there were some minor delays.” When traveling to school on Monday, public transportation ran smoothly from her apartment to campus. “I take the LIRR train followed by the N20 bus, and they ran according to schedule,” she said.

Driving to and from school during the weekend and in the beginning of the week was not as easy though. Eric Palacios, a resi­dent sophomore Pre-Med Biology student, experienced difficulties on the roads and especially in Post’s parking lots.

“Some parts of the roads were icy and there were long lines and when trying to park outside Brookville Hall, the parking lot was icy and not well-cleared at all,” he said. “I had to drive to Pratt and park there.”

Palacios also had trouble when driving to the gas station. “When I heard there was a storm coming, I remembered when gas stations ran out of gas and closed during Hurricane Sandy,” he said. “Therefore I drove to a couple of stations to fill up my tank but by Friday morning some had closed, and at others there were hour-long lines.”

Long lines on the main roads also constituted a problem for students that tried to get to cam­pus by car. “I use Able Ride to get to school, which is a service trans­porting people with disabilities, and they took a little longer than normal,” said Charlie Moerler, a freshman majoring in Electronic Media. But according to Moerler, the worst part of the blizzard was the large quantity of snow. “The day after, we couldn’t even open our front door; my dad and sister spent the entire morning shovel­ing,” he said. “Hopefully the snow melts soon,” he added.