The metro Atlanta students stranded in New York by Hurricane Sandy returned home after a long bus ride Thursday morning.
A charter bus carrying mock trial teams from Jonesboro High School and the Atlanta International School after a national tournament in New York City pulled into the Jonesboro High parking lot around 9 a.m.
The return came after days of flight cancellations on the heels of a ferocious superstorm that tore thruogh much of the Northeast, leaving devastation in its wake.
“The uncertainty of the travel plans was frustrating,” said Jennifer Rupple, an Atlanta International teacher and debate team coach.
The teams eventually opted to take the bus, to curtail further uncertainty from flight delays.
Jonesboro High senior Nancy Saucedo said the bus ride was long and bumpy and it was difficult to sleep, but “We’re just thankful to be here. Anything to get back home.”
National emergency management officials have estimated more than 70 deaths as a result of the hurricane that made landfall on Monday. And areas like lower Manhattan, parts of coastal New Jersey and Staten Island were hard-hit by wind, rain and flooding.
And across the region, power remains out.
But where the students were staying in Brooklyn, less than a mile from the East River and across from lower Manhattan, seemed insulated from the brunt of the storm.
“It wasn’t as intense as what we were seeing on the news,” Rupple said.
Students hunkered down in their hotel rooms and bonded as the worst of the weather pummeled the area.
But the students were aware that where they were – on higher ground, unwittingly embedded with FEMA officials who had additional resources to keep the lights on at the hotel – was a safe place.
“When I turned on the TV, I couldn’t help thinking that people have it so much worse than we do,” Jonesboro High junior Erin Toole said.
Regardless of how safe the students were, anxious parents waiting for their children’s return home still worried.
“You watch the weather reports and you watch the news and you hope that it doesn’t hit where they are,” said Sylvia Williams, an Atlanta International parent, of the nervous hours following the news of her daughter Sidney.
And Rupple, who lived through Hurricane Katrina in 2005, ensured her students that they would be safe.
“As long as we had Netflix on the Internet, we were able to keep the kids calm,” she said.
Parents said they were grateful for how helpful those chaperones, teachers and mock trial coaches were in keeping the lines of communications open.
“They have gone over and beyond what they were called to do as coaches,” said Carol Gossett, whose son, 15-year-old freshman James, was on his first trip to New York. “They’ve been in constant contact with us. We’ve been able to see our children on Skype, and been able to hear them [in the media]. That was so soothing for parents when you have children far away and New York is going through such devastation.”
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