After having homecoming week cut short and missing two days of school for Hurricane Matthew, students will now attend classes on Oct. 28 and April 28.
“On Oct. 27, I was going to go to Halloween Horror Nights for my cousin’s birthday,” junior Kendra Apple said. “It’s not practical to stay out late the night before a school day. It was practical, however, when we didn’t have school that day. I understand that those days were built into the school year for that purpose of taking it away if unforeseen weather occurs, but it happens so rarely that we’re accustomed to making plans that weekend. I just can’t imagine what families that planned on going out of town are going to do.”
With the abbreviated homecoming week, school leaders worked to reschedule Braves Brawl, the bonfire, the parade and the dance. With only one home football game left, they decided to move the events to the week of the Edgewater rivalry game, even though it is an away game.
Braves Brawl, bonfire and court presentation will occur Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Pending permits, the parade is Nov. 4 at 3:30 p.m., before the game scheduled at Edgewater. Then the annual homecoming dance will occur Saturday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m.
Hurricane Matthew began its course hitting the West Indies on Oct. 3, causing damage to Haiti and parts of Cuba and the Bahamas. Haiti, a country still recovering from the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, must now combat a cholera outbreak and a death toll at 1,000 and climbing.
The Category 4 hurricane started approaching the U.S. Southeast’s coast and hit parts of the state, including Central Florida. To be safe, OCPS Superintendent Dr. Barbara Jenkins cancelled school and all functions Oct. 6 – 9.
On Oct. 5, Governor Rick Scott called for a state of emergency, and on Oct. 6, he warned residents of the storm’s magnitude and called for precautionary measures.
As the hurricane moved through Florida, the storm weakened to a Category 2. The damages to the Central Florida area were not as extreme as expected, but Matthew did not pass without incident. A tree limb fell on senior Tyler Rispoli’s mother’s car, trapping them inside their home.
“We could only walk two steps out the front door and we couldn’t leave until workers came to remove the tree. It was frustrating because we were kept inside longer. We were already inside since Thursday and we just felt literally trapped because we could not go anywhere,” Melissa Padgett, Rispoli’s mother, said.
Although the eye of the hurricane never hit land, there was devastation throughout Florida counties. The storm caused destruction to homes and roads, and left approximately 1.1 million homes without power. Coastal counties such as Volusia, Brevard and Flagler, who faced the harshest part of the storm, still await power restoration.
So far, 19 deaths in the U.S. relating to the hurricane have occurred. Hurricane Matthew’s path headed towards North and South Carolina causing extensive flooding in its wake.