Hurricane hits home for campus

Freshman Nicole Album spent the night before her first day of college thinking about home. Specifically, she wondered if it would be standing when she returns. \nAlbum is from New Orleans, where she lives a block away from Lake Pontchartrain, beneath sea level and directly in the eye of Hurricane Katrina's projected path. \n"Basically, my house is going to be underwater if it hits," Album said. "So I'm homeless. It's kind of scary considering my parents might have to buy a new house. Don't you think that's a little intimidating when they have to pay for college, too?"\nAlbum has been in touch with a handful of IU students who are facing a similar ordeal: trying to focus on the first day of school when their homes are facing the serious possibility of flooding or destruction. \nThat proved to be a support system for Album, who hasn't even been able to contact her family -- save an e-mail that said they were evacuating -- because the New Orleans area code has been almost completely inaccessible the day before the impending disaster.\n"I saw like five of them (Saturday) night and we were basically all freaking out about it together," Album said.\nAs of Sunday night, Katrina packed a powerful punch with 175 mph winds and a possible 28-foot storm surge. That forced a mandatory evacuation of the city, which is home to nearly a half million people and is completely below sea level. \nSophomore Brooke Rabin lives just blocks from the same lake and said she has found herself glued to the news, hoping that her house will somehow be saved. Rabin knows, though, that is unlikely. \n"The storm is headed directly for my house," she said. "The only thing protecting our house is the levee system and that is going to be demolished. It's very hard to sit back in Indiana and know you're homeless and not be able to do anything about it. It's just unfathomable."\nLike Album, Rabin has not been able to speak to her family except through text messages and e-mails. She knows they are safe, but Rabin said it's hard to face the possibility of losing her home and not even to be able to speak with her loved ones. The last time she spoke with her father, he had moved photo albums to the highest ground in the house and evacuated along with the family's dogs.\nAs of Sunday night, Rabin said she was holding up.\n"I just imagine a helicopter flying over and it being literally only rooftops," she said. "Imagine flying over Third Street and seeing only rooftops of fraternity and sorority houses -- that's what I'm thinking about. Emotionally, I'm holding up, but toward the end of the night I might not be as strong."\nNew Orleans native and junior Dimitri Loupakos said he expects to see parts of the city beneath 18 to 30 feet of water, wiping away a lot of "great culture and tradition," he said. \nLoupakos said most of his family and friends have evacuated, though some of them left for Houston Sunday at 6 a.m. and hadn't made it through the massive traffic jams by the evening. \n"There's going to be serious damage," Loupakos said. "Even in torrential rainstorm, the city is under water. Then you have sustained winds of 185 mph, gusts of 235 and levees that can't hold anymore than a Category 3. All these factors make a great recipe for a city heading for disaster." \nJunior and New Orleans native Shane Kupperman is still optimistic the storm will diminish or veer out of its projected path. Kupperman's family is staying at Touro Hospital in New Orleans to ride out the storm.\n"We've been through hurricanes before and it's really not such a big deal," Kupperman said. "But obviously this one is much worse than ones in the past." \nWith the storm expected to hit in full force early Monday morning, Rabin said she would not and could not sleep.\n"We knew that one day this would happen and an awful, awful storm would come and everything would be wiped out," Rabin said. "The local news is calling it Lake New Orleans because everything there is going to be one big lake"