Erin Mammel thought she’d be safe waiting out Hurricane Ian with her sister in their first-floor apartment; she wasn’t.
After receiving an evacuation notice from her apartment complex, The Place at Alafaya, Mammel tried to drive off the property. She said within 30 seconds, the flooding rose from 3 feet to 5 feet, and her SUV nearly filled with water. The water shut her car off and the pressure from it outside kept her doors and windows shut. She was stuck with the water rising to her shoulders until she eventually cracked the door open and used her body to get out.
She said being trapped has left her traumatized.
“I almost lost my daughter that day, so I am hysterical,” her mother, Hollie Mammel, said. “I am very upset.”
Erin Mammel said that the situation has affected her mental health. She said that she’s been more stressed and overwhelmed than ever, and she’s not alone.
Many residents of The Place, such as the Mammels, lost their cars, belongings and apartments. Now, they have to process the emotions of what they went through. They believe their stress largely could have been avoided if The Place warned them that they lived in a flood-prone area earlier.
Residents said they asked the administration if they lived in an evacuation zone or flood-prone area before Hurricane Ian, but said The Place informed the residents that it would be safe and not a flood zone. A day before the hurricane, the administration sent a message to several residents saying that they could park their cars in a higher place if there was a flood.
“They sent an email only to certain residents the day before saying that they were prone to flooding and suggested parking their cars by the gym,” Shannon Mammel, Erin Mammel’s sister, said. “But they did not send it to us, so we did not know, so both of our cars are a total loss.”
Hollie Mammel said that The Place exposed the residents to an avoidable, dangerous situation.
“What about these people with little babies?” Hollie Mammel said. “I saw people with toddlers and 3 to 4 years old, and they are in this with … sewage … or, you know, swamp in there, you know; it’s disgusting. It’s swamp water and an alligator swimming around; they had their babies in this muck.”
Erin Mammel’s parents said they would have had their daughters come home if The Place had given them a heads-up.
“The biggest thing is her safety; they did not care about it. My daughter will have nightmares about getting stuck in the car for a long time,” Erin Mammel’s father Glenn Mammel said. “We would have gotten the girls and the cars out if they had warned us.”
Recent UCF graduate Sunsaree Vanaken said she was troubled with how The Place’s administration handled the situation.
“If they had the previous flooding during Irma, you would have thought they would have warned all the residents to evacuate early because they gave us a five-hour notice through text after the flooding had already started,” Vanaken said. “So, no one is here to check on us in case something happens?”
Rachael Gonzalez said that she had to choose between possibly getting electrocuted walking through the water or staying in her apartment with no power and little water. Gonzalez said that The Place sent an email and text, but she wouldn’t have known that if her phone was dead.
“Word of advice: If you are new to the Florida area just like me four years ago, definitely look at FEMA and the flood zones; apparently this is not the first time it’s flooded,” Gonzalez said. “When we signed on to the lease, that was one of my questions, and they said ‘no, this is not a flood zone, you will be safe,’ and I was proven wrong.”
Junior materials science and engineering major Nicholas Pareis said that the The Place sent the notice to evacuate when the flood was already at shoulder level.
“I don’t think anyone up there expected it to happen to their apartment, so their cars flooded slowly,” Pareis said. “That is why you see so many cars there because they were not told to evacuate. They were just kind of waiting, and slowly it became to a point where they could not get out.”
Pareis said that for now, he is emotionally exhausted. At first, he couldn’t get his car out because the roads were flooded, and he had to walk many miles back and forth from The Place to the hotel he was staying in.
“I feel very trapped and exhausted trying to figure out what to do and where to go, and it was already really hard to find a place,” Pareis said. “We had to move out 20 minutes away, which is difficult because The Place was right across the street from the campus, and now we have to figure out how to set up the new place, and there are so many things to do.”
Since the hurricane, Erin Mammel has been in communication with UCF Counseling and Psychological Services and said it has been helpful. She’s hoping to get help from the emergency fund and a loaner laptop.
At CAPS, Vanessa Stein, a licensed clinical social worker and assistant director of Outreach & Prevention, said that counselors have been helping students who have been processing the experience of going through a hurricane. She said students have been asking questions about academics, housing and what’s next for them.
Stein said they also made new specific drop-in spaces to ensure they have available times and space for students impacted by the hurricane. She said it’s a place where students can come as needed to get more support, and a list of those things and times are on their website and social media.
“The drop-in spaces … include things like drumming for hurricane release and also playing with legos for stress relief, and there’s both virtual options and in-person options,” Stein said. “And those will happen over the next, like, week or two.”
Stein said that they are also working with their campus partners, particularly with Student Care Services, to help assist in calling students who may have indicated that they are struggling.
“We have some resources that have been put together by the university, so there are apartment complexes in the community that have said ‘we have openings.’ There are also hotels that have offered discounted rates for students, but they would have more of the specific information,” Stein said.
Stein also said that students have essential resources they can take advantage of from the UCF Mobile app.
“In the UCF app, there is a well-being section that includes both Therapy Assistance Online, or TAO, and TogetherAll. The TAO is our online program with specific modules for coping with the storm, and TogetherAll is our online peer-to-peer support forum that is moderated by licensed counselors,” Stein said.
Stein said that these are easily accessible ways for students to get mental health support on their own time and from their phones.
Students are looking toward the future but won’t forget what they went through.
Allyson Langston got accepted into UCF for business finance but said she took a gap year to get situated. Langston said one thing she will not forget is when she was trying to escape the flood and winds, she saw a mother with two children holding a baby, and the other toddler slipped from the mother’s hand into the flash flooding. Langston was able to grab the little girl and save her from floating away.
Langston is still emotionally affected and doesn’t know when she will be OK again.
“Honestly, I have been a train wreck this entire time because we are on such short notice to figure everything out,” Langston said. ”And no matter what anyone says or does and everyone says it’s going to be okay, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be okay at all; it’s my entire life gone.”
In hopes of trying to rebuild their lives, some of the impacted students have created GoFundMe campaigns, including Langston and Erin Mammel.