As Hurricane Irma slams the Caribbean, an Edmonton student is planning to ride it out with water and supplies in her Puerto Rico dorm room.
Tannu Prabhakar, 25, watched the growing storm from the deck of the dorms at Interamerican University in Bayamon, Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon.
The optometry student started to take the storm seriously after seeing media coverage of Hurricane Irma on Monday.
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On Tuesday she travelled to the airport with her roommate Aleena Ayaz, from Calgary, to find flights to the U.S.
“I think we were there for a few hours,” Prabhakar said in a telephone interview. “We couldn’t find any flights. They were either booked or cancelled.”
Air Canada, Westjet and Air Transat are still sending flights to the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos, but not to Puerto Rico.
So she plans to stay put in her dorm room with her roommate and her roommate’s husband with hopes that Bayamon won’t be hit too hard by the hurricane.
“We went out to the grocery store and gathered whatever we could, like extra water and nonperishable food,” she said. “We’re just prepared at this point to ride it out, and stay safe in our dorms.”
‘Potentially catastrophic’
Hurricane Irma is the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, threatening the Caribbean and the southern Atlantic portion of the U.S.
“Irma is a potentially catastrophic Category 5 hurricane and will bring life-threatening wind, storm surge, and rainfall hazards to Puerto Rico tonight,” the National Weather Service posted on its Twitter account about 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
Prabhakar said she isn’t too nervous as the storm has been mild so far at the campus. The university has a water tank and a generator, which was still running Wednesday afternoon.
But her parents have been checking in with her from Edmonton, and have been trying to get as many updates as they can about the severity of the hurricane as it develops.
“They just know it’s scary,” said Prabhakar. “I’m sure it’s scary for them.”