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Hurricane Season
Helping to Alleviate Your Child's Fears
By Laura Cone
Some people say they will be more prepared for future hurricanes after having been through disasters in the past.
Kimbel Burt, a parent liaison at Ben Franklin Senior High School, a charter school rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, says she will be more prepared next time. "The year before last, we were pretty new to here and it was my first big hurricane," Burt says. "We started to go to Houston. It took me eight hours to get to Baton Rouge from here."
Burt says she was tired of driving and called her father, who gave her the number of a friend from college. "I called him up at 3 in the morning and said who I was and who my daddy was," she says. "He said, 'I know your dad.' I said, 'Can I come stay with you? I'm really tired of driving.' He did not know me from Adam. He said, 'Sure.'"
People who have young children may want to plan ahead to find friends or relatives who can give them temporary lodging. "With Katrina, we weren't real prepared either," says Burt, who has two children. "We just went with work people. Next time I'm going to have it all set up. People need to know where they are going to go and be prepared for that instead of being surprised each time."
Burt says 60 percent of the students at Ben Franklin are not in their original homes. Students and faculty attend lectures on stress. After a major disaster, it's important to find a sense of normalcy again, according to Burt. "A lot of parents still don't live with their kids," she says. "Their kids are living with other people just to go to this school. This to them is normalcy. Fifty percent of our staff lost everything. For them to come back here, that was normalcy. They did not have to think about it. These kids, all they have to do is think about what they are studying."
