This time of year, as many of you may know, is hurricane season. It began approximately at the beginning of June, and is scheduled to end before December. Hurricanes mainly occur on the east coast, but even Carlsbad, from miles and miles away, can feel the tragedy. On Aug. 30, 2017, one of the biggest hurricanes this season hit Florida, and it was Hurricane Irma.

Irma left the state of Florida with nothing but destruction. This powerful hurricane caused DisneyWorld to close their doors, and southern Florida to evacuate. Although the evacuation was incredibly successful, there were still deaths and injuries because of Irma.

“There’s nothing we can really do about it as of now, since it’s a force of nature, but once the hurricane is over I think it’s really important that we have a lot of people going in there to help,” senior Max Ward from Green Club said.

The hurricane deprived the Florida citizens of their easy access to food and water, and many around the country are left wondering how to help. Charities are taking donations of food, clothing, and money in an attempt to help Irma victims after losing everything.

“If I was able to fly to Florida after the hurricane, I think the most important thing is making sure that everybody there has food and water,” Ward said.” … there’s no really clean water there anymore, because everything’s been mixed together and everything on the ground has infected their ground water, so the fresh water as of now is very hard to access there, and then food. I mean, there’s obviously not going to be any good grocery stores to go to.”

Not only did the Florida residents lose easy access to food and water, but they also lost electricity and many lost their homes. One outcome of this was the deaths of at least eight elders in a nursing home without air conditioning.

“I don’t think any of us can just fly out there and help, but I think something we can do to help [here] is donating money to organizations that are actually flying out food and water and emergency services to Florida,” Ward said.

Because of Hurricane Irma, Florida’s death toll rates have increased greatly. At least 24 people have died with some connection to the hurricane. Even though all of this destruction and injury is happening on the other side of the country, our state is still affected.

“I think one of the main ways that it’s affecting the entire United States, not necessarily just California, is that Florida is one of the largest states in our country and there’s a lot of people who have family and relatives there that are having to move outwards out of Florida,” Ward said.

Some infamous hurricanes include Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Matthew (2016), and Hurricane Andrew (1992). After all the damage that Hurricane Irma has caused, it could very possibly become a memorable time in history.

“I’m not sure how big it is as compared to Hurricane Katrina but I feel like for every generation there’s a few big things that kind of bring everybody in the country together, like 9/11, Katrina, WWII,” Ward said. “So I think it’s going to kind of play similarly to that. I think there’s going to be some controversy following Irma, but in regards to how it’s going to go down throughout history, I think it’ll have a pretty large effect on American history.”

Irma has made quite an impact on our country and will continue to be remembered throughout history.

“I think it’s desperately important that we don’t really joke a lot about Irma,” Ward said. “I’ve been seeing a lot of jokes about Irma, and I think it’s very important to understand that is the effect of some things that we’ve as humanity to kind of hurt the Earth. We’re not really well-known for taking good care of the environment. It’s important that we try and turn that around.”