Hurricane Dorian tragedy in the Bahamas moves freshmen to act — maybe

A freshman class poll in the days after Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas showed only a fifth of the students had ever heard of the storm, which scientists said was one of the strongest hurricanes the world has ever experienced.

But once they found out about it, two-thirds said they’d be willing to donate $2 to help the victims — said to be tens of thousands of people who’ve lost everything, including the cities they lived in.

Freshmen Benjamin Gamson and Talia Shapira conducted the poll as part of a ninth-grade journalism assignment. They said they would consider starting a fund together after their article is published.

They said that to their surprise, changing the polling question made people more generous.

First students were asked, “Are you interested in efforts to help the victims of Hurricane Dorian,” without any specific way of helping. Fifty percent said yes.

But the next question asked was “Would you be willing to donate $2 to help victims” of the storm.

“When we gave them a specific number that they could donate, the percentage went up from 50 percent to 66.7 percent,” Benjamin said, “and even though 100 percent of people in the class haven’t helped, 66.7 percent said they would donate $2 to help.”

Thirty students were polled through an online Google form on Sept. 13, Benjamin said.

Talia said that she and Benjamin will decide after Rosh Hashanah whether to start a GoFundMe.org campaign collecting money for Dorian victims.

“After working on the article for journalism and learning more about the hurricane, I started to care more about helping the people who were affected by this,” said Talia.

Money is something the Bahamas definitely will need. Hurricane Dorian is the costliest disaster in Bahamian history, estimated to have left behind $7 billion in property damage. As the Bahamas were recovering it was hit by a new tropical storm this past Friday which will only add to the damage and recovery that will be needed.

The tens of thousands of people in its path had little time to react. Dorian began as a tropical storm Aug. 24 and quickly developed, growing over the course of six days from a tropical storm into a category 5 hurricane by Sept. 1.

It then lingered cruelly over the Bahamas for almost 48 hours, a stationary storm with steady hurricane force winds as strong as a tornado. About The 70,000 people were left homeless, about 2,500 are missing. As of Sept. 23, 50 people have been confirmed dead as the death toll continues to rise.

Hurricane Dorian is also notable for how far it traveled. After the Eastern Caribbean, it traveled past Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands at 13 miles per hour. When Dorian hit the warm water of the Atlantic it intensified and became catastrophic for the people of the Bahamas.

Its force dissipated when it traveled to the United States passing Florida and deluging South Carolina with 90 mile-per-hour winds. What began as a Category 2 storm left 200,000 people without power.
It later struck Canada, causing heavy rainfall and wind damage in Nova Scotia, Canada — a part of the East Coast too far north to have been struck by many hurricanes in the past.