The first summer I spent in Tallahassee I lived off campus in a run down house. A little tropical storm was moving in, direct hit forecast. My housemates, a classmate (who lived in a mobile home close to the coast), and I decided to stay in the university library for the night. It was normally open twenty four hours a day and was a civil defense shelter, so we figured it had to be safer than our homes of the time.

An hour before the storm was estimated to hit Tallahassee, the university decided to shut the library. My classmates and I had no transportation - the campus bus system had been shut down hours earlier. Our classmate was in worse shape - she had checked with a neighbor and the roads to the mobile home were closed due to fallen trees. The outer bands of the storm were already hitting with 45-50 mph winds and torrential rains.

The classmate ended up giving us a lift to our decrepit rental house where we all huddled in the dark - we had not stocked up with batteries, flashlights or candles since we 1) did not have the money for emergency supplies and 2) had not planned on being there. We also had no radio to listen to emergency broadcasts - when there was a break in the rain and winds, the classmate went out to her car to check for news.

Fortunately, we and the house survived, but it never made sense to us why the authorities would close the ONLY civil defense shelter on campus during a disaster.