On Aug. 23, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter 136 miles away from the Hopkins campus in Mineral, Virginia, struck Baltimore.
On the evening of Aug. 27, the outer edge of Hurricane Irene reached the Hopkins campus and put Maryland in a state of emergency.
Immediately following the earthquake, Hopkins issued a JHBroadcast statement detailing their hasty response to the afternoon's events.
At the time of the first broadcast, Hopkins conceded that they were not even sure whether or not there had been any significant damage, but thought that everything was fine, and assured the student body that buildings were being reoccupied.
Two hours later, another JHBroadcast was sent out. This time, it included a guide on what to do in the event of an earthquake from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In a region that does not normally have earthquakes, it seems the university made sure to notifying its students of how to deal with such a situation.
A third JHBroadcast was issued the next morning with more concrete information on the state of the university.
"We have no reports of significant injuries to university students, faculty members or staff members as a result of the earthquake and no reports of significant damage to owned or leased buildings or other university facilities," the JHBroadcast stated.
The email came with the assurance that if another earthquake was to happen in the future, Hopkins would be prepared for it.
"The university actually freaked me out more with their emails," junior Natalie Copeland said. "I felt the earthquake and I thought it was cool, I had never felt one before."
In contrast, Karen Woods, a freshman from South Carolina, did not think the earthquake was a big deal. "The university and region overreacted," Wood said. "I used to live in California, so I've experienced earthquakes and they aren't really that bad."
Carrie Bennett, liaison between the school and community, said that she considered the earthquake to be a weird occurrence than a disaster.
"Over at [the] office in the Mattin Center, [I] just thought it was the air conditioning acting up," she said.
Responding to the earthquake was also an unfamiliar procedure.
"I didn't do anything except make sure the building and outside was okay," Bennett said. "There wasn't really much to do. It was just an unusual event."
Days later, the university was back on its feet, responding to the threat of Hurricane Irene, a category three hurricane moving up the east coast.
Early Friday morning, a JHBroadcast reported that the area was under "tropical storm warning," with heavy gusts of wind and rainfall predicted, leading to a chance of flooding.
The university supplied guides for preparedness, and what to do in a hurricane. Additionally, a second broadcast urged students to sign up for text message alerts in the case of blackouts.
Senior Christian Parrish praised the university for its preparedness.
"They were realistic about the threat," he said. "When [I] was here two years ago for the blizzard, the city responded very badly and was ill-equipped to deal with the situation. They got lucky that the situation wasn't as bad as it could've been, but they also prepared well."
"[I] worked, using social media and email to encourage students to stay inside and prepare their property for the storm," Bennett said.
Bennett was at Hopkins back in the early 2000s when another large hurricane hit and sent quite a few trees toppling.
Most notably, a tree fell into the AMR building. She praises the university's tree planning ability.
"They've done a lot of work to make sure the trees are safe," Bennett said. "It's really minimized the odds of a real problem happening."
On the night of the storm she was out until about 2 a.m. trying to keep students safe.
"I urged the younger ones to go home. They have four years to party. Most of them listened, and I really appreciated that," Bennett said.
Many results from the storm was not necessarily physical damage. Many orientation events were cancelled for the Class of 2015, one being Convocation.
"I didn't think it was necessary for them to cancel the events. The weather wasn't that bad," freshman John Granger said.
Woods was also sad the events were cancelled.
"I really would've liked to participate," she said.
Currently, Convocation has been rescheduled to take place on Sept. 19.
