By Jonathan Smith, Managing Editor

Students from Bermuda were left worried over the weekend as the eye of hurricane Fabian-the worst storm to hit the island in 50 years-passed directly over friends and family on the island.

“I felt like the distance between Abilene and Bermuda had tripled because I couldn’t reach anybody to see that they were OK,” said Gisele Richards, graduate student from Bermuda, whose whole family-including her husband and two sons-live on the island.

Antonia Foster, freshman accounting finance major from Bermuda, said she first heard about the storm from another student three days before it hit the island, but she didn’t hear anymore about it until she was talking to her family Sept. 4.

“My mom said she was getting batteries for flashlights because they weren’t sure how long the electricity was going to be out,” Foster said. “My dad was boarding up the house.”

The hurricane hit Bermuda around 2 p.m. Sept. 5 and lasted until around 2 a.m. Saturday. Sustained winds for the storm were around 120 miles per hour, occasionally gusting to more. Richards said her family told her that the rain was not near as bad as the wind.

“There were lots of very large articles that were being thrown around by the wind,” Richards said. “Sections of people’s roofs were landing in other people’s backyards; trees were being ripped up.”

Richards said one of the members of her family had the roof of their house cave in and there was also flooding inside the house.

“They’re trying to get as many people as possible to patch up holes so that they don’t get rain coming in,” Richards said. “Anyone who has internal stuff like flooding have to kind of wait.”

Both Richards and Foster were able to talk to their families before the hurricane hit and then again after it passed.

“I was just thankful they were able to talk to me by telephone,” Richards said. “I just had to keep praying, and I just tried to keep myself occupied.”

Foster said that the hardest part was not being able to see her family and that she seemed more worried than they were.

“I was worried, more worried than I needed to be,” Foster said. “When I called [my family] they seemed happy, and I was like, ‘How can you be happy right now?'”

Hurricanes are not uncommon for Bermuda, which has a hurricane season from June to November. The last hurricane of this magnitude was Hurricane Emily, which hit Bermuda in late September 1987.

“With Emily, we didn’t have any warning,” Richards said. “With this one, they were able to get people properly secured, and the warnings were there”